


Hospital Beds

by Pink_Cactus



Category: The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue Series - Mackenzi Lee
Genre: Abuse, Alcoholism, Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Modern AU, Panic Attacks, Suicide Attempt, This is probably super inaccurate, addition, but oh well i wrote the thing, hospitals are my kink so, i haven't ever posted my fanfiction before, lots of trigger warnings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-07-11 21:43:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 27,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19934956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pink_Cactus/pseuds/Pink_Cactus
Summary: 5 times Monty and Percy spent time in hospitals together.modern A/U





	1. Emergency Room

**Author's Note:**

> ok so.   
> 1\. this is the first fanfiction i've ever posted eeeeeeek i am panicking???  
> 2\. it's set in modern times because lol history research  
> 3\. it's set in boston because lol i know nothing about england but i went to school in boston  
> 4\. sorry hospitals are my weird kink so i'm writing this (but like not kink in a sexy way)   
> 5\. we hate richard peele
> 
> tw (for this and future chapters): abuse, alcoholism, suicide, suicide attempts, depression, anxiety, panic attacks, basically all the same things in the book?

I kept dropping my phone. 

I couldn’t tell if it was because my hands were shaking or because my fingers were slippery with blood. It was smeared across the phone screen so that the light it emitted was a sickly pink like Pepto-Bismol. I had the brightness on low and the light was still making my eyes burn. I was also trying to maneuver the thing left handed because my right one was I clamped over my ear, trying to stop the blood. I could feel it soaking down into the collar of my t shirt. I couldn’t seem to tell where it was coming from—my ear itself or the skin around it. Either way it was bad. I kept feeling like I was about to tip over, even though I was sitting down slumped with my back to my bedroom door. I swallowed back vomit. 

It’s not like my dad had never hit me before but I was pretty sure everyone’s dad did that. I was pretty sure. Or they took away their cell phone and car keys. Mine just did both of those and then also sometimes punched me in the face, or the ribs if it was the school year. That way no one saw it.   
And he’d done it before when I broke curfew. He liked to sit up in his office and wait until he saw the headlights of my tesla down the driveway. They’d catch the window, illuminating his silhouette and I’d get this sick lurch of dread. 

I knew if I didn’t go to his office before I went to bed, it would be far worse the next day. 

I didn’t turn on the hall light when I opened the door, so the only light came from the sleek Scandinavian lamp over his desk. The whole house looked like it had been designed by a fucking Bond villain. 

He was looking at his watch when I came in, leaning backward against his desk and staring at his fucking watch like this was a play. “Two thirty, Henry.” 

I didn’t say anything. 

He looked up. “Come here.” I didn’t move. “Come. Here.” 

I took a step forward, then another, feeling like I was dragging my feet through mud to make them work. We had learned about fight or flight the last year in biology class and every time I was around my dad, it was like the two of them were happening simultaneously. I’d be something for the scientists to study—the only living thing that couldn’t decide between the two. 

“Look at me.” 

My chin jerked up, and he slapped me before I knew what had happened.

“You little shit,” he hissed. “You come home two fucking hours late and you think you can look at me like that?” 

I wasn’t sure how I’d looked at him. I’d had a few beers. The first beers I’d ever had that weren’t just a sip off someone’s can at a barbeque. Enough that I could still drive. So long as I wasn’t pulled over. Though I think the cop would have been more worked up over the fact that I’m sixteen. 

He held out a hand to me. “Give me your keys.” 

I dropped the Tesla keys into his open palm. The key chain Percy had gotten me on an orchestra trip to New York glinted in the light. 

“Phone.” 

I’d been ready for this. “It’s in my room.” 

He crossed his arms. “Then go get it.” 

When I didn’t move, he slapped me again. It probably wouldn’t have wobbled me except for the beers, and I staggered. Which was all he needed. He grabbed me by the front of my shirt, jerking me to him. My knee hit the similarly sleek and Scandinavian chair in front of his desk and knocked it over. He grabbed me by the face and dragged me into him and I tried not to breathe. 

He smelled it anyway. “Are you drunk? Answer me, Henry.” 

“I’m not.” 

“You fucking lie to my face? You’re sixteen and you’re drunk and you drove home?” 

Only because I’d known if I’d taken an Uber he would have seen the charge on my card and we’d be having this same conversation except tomorrow when he checked my bank account. That and I hadn’t wanted to sit and wait for an Uber in the middle of nowhere in Marblehead for ten minutes in Richard Peele’s enormous empty house with all the lights off and give him another chance to shove his hands down my boxers. 

Dad shoved me backward and slapped me again, on the same spot he’d been holding on tight enough to leave fingerprints. I fisted my hands. Don’t cry. Don’t put your hands up .It will be so much worse if you put your hands up. 

“Look at me, Henry. Look me in the goddamn eyes when I’m talking to you.” 

I looked at him. 

“You’re a fucking idiot,” he said really slowly like I was dumb. “Say it.” 

“I’m a fucking idiot,” I repeated. 

“I’m an irresponsible dumbass and when I get myself killed because I drink underage and then I’m too stupid not to drive drunk, no one will care.” 

“It was one beer!” I said before I could stop myself. 

“If you come back home drunk one more time, I’ll lock you out. You come back past curfew again and you won’t be sleeping in my fucking house. I don’t care if it’s freezing outside, I don’t care if you’re stoned or high or drunk or bleeding or whatever the fuck you get up to. If you pull this shit again, don’t come home. Got that?”

And then I said, with every bit of stupid sass I had bottled up inside me, “Wow, If I knew all it would take to get out of your fucking house was a couple of beers I would have become an alcoholic when I was twelve—”

And then he backhanded me. I felt like all my teeth went loose, and my vision went starry. I stumbled and tripped over the chair I had knocked over. I fell all the way to the ground, and as I went, the side of my head slammed into the corner of his desk. I felt the skin on my skull tear. 

Everything was dark for a few seconds, then it was fuzzy. I was sprawled on the ground. One of my ears was ringing like I’d been standing next to a subwoofer.   
“Get up,” I heard my dad say, and from his tone I could tell he’d said it a few times and I hadn’t responded. Had I passed out? 

I tried to stand and was immediately certain I couldn’t. My vision went black again before I’d made it to my knees. I felt like I was going to throw up. 

“Stand. Up. Henry,” dad said slowly. “Or I’ll make sure you can’t.” 

I made it to my knees, then pushed myself up on that stupid Scandinavian chair but couldn’t stand straight. Something dribbled down my face and I wasn’t sure if it was blood or spittle. 

Dad turned away in disgust. “You’re such a fucking drama queen.”

Maybe it was both. In the light, it looked pink.

Dad turned back to his desk and flicked off the desk light. “Go to bed, Henry. And I want to see you at breakfast at seven am sharp before I leave for London.” 

Don’t throw up, I told myself. Don’t throw up. I couldn’t see straight. I wasn’t sure if I could walk. 

“I said go to bed,” he snapped. “I suggest you take that chance before I change my mind.” 

And I staggered out.

I’d made it halfway up the stairs to my bedroom before my legs gave out. I crawled the rest of the way, shutting the door and collapsing against it. I swiped my hand over my ringing ear, feeling the edges of the laceration. I wasn’t sure what was happening but I was definitely fucked up. 

I reached up, fumbling for my phone on my dresser. I thought briefly that I could have called 911. I could have called child protective services. Could I? Was I a child anymore? I wasn’t sure a sort-of drunk sixteen year old would be top of their priorities list. My dad had just done what anyone’s would have. 

I managed to open my texts, in spite of my blood slippery fingers. I had twenty-five unread messages, all from Percy. My vision blurred as I tried to make them out. 

Forgot to ask—r we still on for avengers tomorrow at two? 

Lol Will you even be awake by then? 

Are you still at dick’s? 

Sorry Richard. Freudian slip ;) 

Jk not freudian cause he’s a super dick. Can we talk about how many times he had to mention his parents were at their house in Majorca? We get it Dick you’re fucking rich. JFC. 

Monty. You’re not asleep are you? 

Answer meeeeeeee

Monty

Monty

Monty

Omg did you see they announced boston calling line up?? JANELLE MONAE IS HEADLINING 

BE EXCITED ABOUT THIS WITH ME WE ARE TOTALLY FUCKING GOING 

Should I get tickets now? Or does your dad still have that VIP hook up like last year. 

I’m just gonna buy them and make you go with me to see the queeeeeen. 

Oh jk they’re not actually on sale yet. Jesus I’m tired. 

Come on, there’s no way you’re asleep before me. I call bullshit. 

Shit maybe you’re driving and I made you get in a fiery wreck and you’re dead. 

Jk. Don’t be dead plz. We still need to see Janell Monae. 

LIVE FOR JANELL MONAE. 

Monty

Monty Monty Monty Monty 

Tell me if we’re seeing avengers tomorrow so I know if I need to reschedule my violin lesson

Montyyyyyyyyyyy tell me so I can go to beeeeeeeeeed you dick 

Oh shit. I forgot you’re doing the no phone when you go out thing so your dad can’t take it away. 

Okay well. I’m going to bed then. Hope you got in ok. Text me in the morning about avengers.

Or DM me if you don’t have your phone. 

Hope everything’s okay xx 

We had all been at Richard Peele’s house because his parents were, indeed, at their house in fucking Majorca. It wasn’t a party or anything. Just somewhere to be dicks without adults around. Everyone had left at eleven because of curfews. I’d been the last to go because I couldn’t find my car keys. Usually I’d give Percy a ride home but he was borrowing his cousin’s car while he was home for the summer from Columbia. “You want me to wait?” he’d asked as I dug through the couch cushions, but I’d told him I’d find them. Go home. See you soon. 

Percy had only been gone a minute when Richard appeared in the doorway to their basement lounge, dangling my keys between his thumb and forefinger. “Found them.”  
When I reached out to take them he’d pulled them out of my reach, dangling them like bait on a fishing line. “Want a beer? My parents have a shitload in the fridge.” 

“I can’t.” 

“Why not?” 

“You’re literally holding my car keys.” When he didn’t get it, I promopted, “I have to drive home.” 

“So have a beer and hang out and sober up and then drive home.” I’d never had a beer before. I’d tasted beer and it was gross and I really didn’t want one. But then Richard stuck my car keys in his pocket and said, “It’s one fucking beer Montague. Man up.” 

Two beers later, I was woozy and light headed and we were making out on his bed. He was on top of me, grinding me, and I kept opening my eyes to stare at the extremely large photo of himself he had hanging over the other side of the room and thinking how this whole house was giving me Kanye West vibes, and trying not to think about whether I didn’t like this because I wasn’t gay or because it was Richard or maybe I did like it this just isn’t really as fun as everyone pretends it is or maybe it’s because I’m drunk or straight or maybe I should be trying harder to enjoy this to prove to myself I’m neither of those things.   
He started to undo my belt, and I came to my senses enough to pushed him off. “Cut it out, I have to get home.” 

He fell backward onto his pillows, reclining like he was a fucking pinup. “I thought you were too drunk to drive.” 

“What time is it?” 

“Where’s your phone?” 

I fumbled my belt buckle back into place. “With my fucking car keys. What time is it?” 

He glanced at his—kill me—Apple watch. “12:30.” 

“Shit.” 

“What?” 

“I’m late.” 

“Don’t go.” He reached out and grabbed the back of my t shirt as I stood up. “You can’t drive. You just had a beer.” 

“Fuck you.” 

“You want to?” 

I froze, sitting on the edge of his bed. “Want to what?” 

“Fuck me.” When I didn’t say anything, he rolled his eyes. “Fine. Go home. Pussy.” 

“Go to hell.” 

“Are you saving your first time for Percy Newton? Aw Monty that’s so fucking sweet I’m getting a cavity.” 

“Percy and I aren’t dating,” I snapped, and why the fuck was I defending myself to Richard Peele? I didn’t care what this dick thought of me and Percy dating or not dating because Richard Peele didn’t matter and Percy and I weren’t dating and who cared if we were? It wasn’t an insult. It was twenty-fucking-nineteen for christ’s sake.   
“So fuck me.” When I didn’t move, he reached out and hooked a finger in one of my belt loops. I didn’t push him away with quite as much strength this time, and he pulled me back onto the bed next to him “You want me to start?” He had my belt undone before I knew what was happening and his hands were roaming around in my boxers. “It’s okay if you’re still learning. We can play hot for teacher.” 

I had already missed my curfew. I was already screwed. And I still didn’t know if I was gay or bi or what the fuck it would feel like to have a dude go down on me, even if that dude was Richard fucking Peele. 

“Fine,” I had said, and pushed my jeans down. 

All of this while Percy had been texting me about the fucking Avengers and Janell Monae. 

I managed to fumble his contact page open and hit call, then nudged the speaker phone button with my wrist. There was so much blood on my fingers the touch screen wouldn’t respond to them. I listened to the ring, slumping against the door more and more with each hollow echo. It was two in the morning. He was asleep. He had told me he was going to sleep. I imagined him rolling over in a groggy haze as his phone vibrated on his nightstand, seeing my name (or, as he had changed it to as a joke in English class several weeks ago when we’d all been talking about which Breakfast Club type archetype we’d fit into, “The Hot One”) silencing the vibrations and turning the phone face down before he rolled over and went back to—

“Monty?” 

I must have imagined it. My ears were still ringing. 

But then, “Hello?” His voice was fuzzy and I knew he’d just woken up. “Monty?” 

“Hi,” I croaked. I wasn’t crying but my voice was shaking like I was. 

I heard the rustle of him sit up in bed. “What’s wrong?” 

I almost laughed at how many answers I could have provided for that question. “Can you come get me?” 

“Yeah, course,” he said without hesitation. “Are you still at Richard’s?” 

“No. I’m home.” A pause. I closed my eyes. My head was spinning. “I need you to take me to the ER.” 

“Shit. Okay, I’m leaving now.”

“Wait, don’t…” I had a sudden panicked vision of my dad catching me sneaking out with Percy. “You can’t have your…”

“What? I can’t understand you, you’re slurring.” 

“Turn your headlights off. When you come up the drive.”

“Do you want to meet me in the Yard instead?” 

The thought of walking the half a block from our colonial mansion to the dingy corner bodega near Harvard Yard where I’d met Percy before almost killed me. “I don’t think I can.” 

“No worries,” he said at once. “I’ll be there in ten. Headlights off. I’ll text you when I’m close.” 

I got a sense of how bad I looked when I opened the passenger door to Percy’s cousin’s Prius, and the overhead light went on. Percy completely failed to hide his shock. “Jesus Christ.” 

I dropped into the passenger seat and didn’t say anything. My head hurt so bad I was having a hard time holding it up and my ear was still being weird. 

“Holy shit. Fuck. Monty…fuck, get the light.” Percy reached over me and shut the door, then reversed, the car almost silent at such a low speed. “What the fuck happened?”

I yanked on the lever on the side of the seat so that it reclined far enough back that I could lie down, the bleeding side of my face away from the upholstery.   
As soon as we were out of my neighborhood, Percy peeled over to the shoulder, then unzipped his sweatshirt and bundled it up. “Here,” he said, and pressed it in between my hand and my face. I could hear him still talking but couldn’t make out the words. 

I raised my head off the seat. “What?” 

“I said…” and then he faded out again. 

“I can’t hear you.” 

“What happened?” 

“I fell.” Not a lie.

“At Richard’s.” When I didn’t answer, he prompted, “Monty. It wasn’t…was it Richard?” 

Percy was wearing slippers, I realized. Slippers and plaid pajama bottoms with a hole in the knee and a stretched out waistband, topped by a faded t shirt from the Florence and the Machine concert we’d gone to for his birthday two years before. I’d slept in that shirt before. I’d kidnapped that shirt for several weeks just so that I could sleep in it. I could smell his deodorant on it. I could smell his deodorant and I didn’t know how to tell him that Richard had made me blow him that night but also I had sort of done it willingly and then my father had beat me up for coming home late and drunk and I probably wouldn’t be able to walk if he knew I had been out late because I was fucking around with a guy. 

“Monty,” Percy said again. 

“Pull over.” 

He did without question, swerving onto the shoulder, and as soon as he stopped, I fumbled open the Prius door and vomited in the gutter. Behind me, I heard Percy swear again. I slumped back into the car, pressing a hand over my face. 

“Mount Auburn is the closest ER,” I thought heard him say. “But I gotta flip around.” 

“I can’t,” I said, my voice hoarse. 

“Can’t what?” 

“I can’t go to the hospital.” 

“Fuck that, I don’t think you have a lot of other—”

“I can’t, I’ve been drinking.” 

Percy’s voice faltered. “What?” 

“After you left,” I said. “I had a beer at Richard’s and then we…hung out for a while and I drove home and they’re gonna make me do one of the…the things, then tests where they check if you…where you have to blow into the…” The word wasn’t coming to me, and all I could think about when I said blow was Richard’s dick in my mouth and I thought I was going to throw up again and I couldn’t think of the goddamn word. I slammed a fist against the dashboard. “The test thing! The fucking test!” 

“Breathalyzer.”

“Yes! And then they’re going to arrest me and my dad’s going to fucking kill me.” 

“It’s gonna be okay,” Percy said, his voice shaking but calm, but I cut him off. 

“Perce, I mean it,” I said. “He’s going to kill me.” 

Silence. The black windows of the car flashed as the streetlights passed over us. I felt the car turn as Percy pulled the U turn, back toward Mount Auburn Hospital. I felt him reach over and grab my shoulder and shake me. I raised my head. “Mmm?” 

“Are you awake? Can you hear me?” 

“I don’t know. What did you say?” 

He blew a long breath through his nose. “I said it’s gonna be okay. I promise.” 

It was either a slow night for emergencies or I had enough blood on me to earn an instant admittance to a half-room with a gurney surrounded by a curtain patterned with wilting florals in a sad shade of green. I didn’t remember much of what happened. I remembered stitches, an ear exam, the way the nurse had to ask me three times if I could hear a ringing in one or both ears before I understood the words, a large piece of gauze taped in place covering my ear and the stitched cut. Almost starting to irrationally cry when they told me that Percy couldn’t stay with me for a CT scan and the way he told me he’d be right here, he’d be right here waiting for me, and he was.   
I was only slightly more lucid when a doctor with her hair cut close to her head came behind the privacy curtain and smiled at me. I was curled up on the gurney, my head throbbing, feeling miserable. Percy had his hand on my arm and was massaging circles into my skin with his thumb. She hadn’t made Percy leave when I’d asked if he could stay. 

“You sustained a fairly intense concussion,” she said, glancing at the clip board in her hand. She had a light European accent I couldn’t place. Majorca, I thought hysterically, and almost started to laugh. “So you’re going to have to take it easy for a bit. Get a lot of rest, take some Advil and drink a lot of water. Are you a sports player?” When I didn’t say anything, Percy answered for me that I wasn’t. The doctor nodded. “Well no strenuous physical activity for a few weeks, okay? Take it easy. In the mean time, I’m going to schedule you an appointment in our audiology department for as soon as possible—could you come in tomorrow morning?” 

Again, Percy answered for me—yes, I could. He’d drive me. 

“Great.” She nodded twice, once for each of us. “They’ll be able to do a more thorough examination. For now, all I can say for sure is that you ruptured your eardrum. The severity of that varies, but there’s some incredible hearing aid technology these days—”

I finally felt like I realized what she was saying. “Hearing aids?” I interrupted. 

She pursed her lips. “The head trauma resulted in damage to the hearing in your right ear. I can’t say if it will be permanent or not but you’re currently deaf in your right ear—the audiology department can give you a better idea and discuss your options with you. Surgery, hearing aids—it may heal on its own.” A pause. She glanced down at the clipboard again. “How did you hit your head?” she asked, too casually. 

“I fell,” I said bluntly. 

“Were you out? At home?” When I nodded, she askd, “Were you pushed? What did you hit your head on?”

“Can I go, please?” I said instead of answering. I was still pressing Percy’s sweatshirt to my chest like I was a child, even though it was still damp with blood. “I want to go home.” 

The doctor nodded. “You can go. But please come back to talk to the audiology department.” 

“We will,” Percy interrupted. 

“Great. Great.” She unhooked something from her clipboard, then dropped it on the end of the bed. “Have a good night. Be safe.” 

I glanced down at what she’d left. It was a glossy color pamphlet with the words NATIONAL DOMESTIC VIOLENCE HOTLINE in bold letters on the front. Both Percy and I stared at it like it was a rattlesnake she’d dropped between us. Then I kicked the bedclothes off of me, letting the pamphlet fall to the floor, and sat up slowly, my head dipping between my legs as dizziness overwhelmed me. From the back of the pamphlet, Get Help Today with a hotline number below it stared up at me in 72-point font. 

“Can I stay at yours?” I asked, looking up at Percy, and he nodded. 

We pulled into his driveway at 5 am, and squished into his twin bed as the sun was beginning to rise, a bed he’d outgrown years ago with sheets that were soft from being washed too many times. In the darkness, I could make out the shapes of the posters he’d tacked to the corkboard over his desk. I didn’t have to see them clearly to know what they are. A playbill from a Broadway show his aunt had taken him to when he was twelve. A certificate for scholarship in the school’s orchestra program. An illustration of Captain American and Bucky I had bought him at Comicon a few years ago. A postcard from his father’s last station in the navy. A strip from a photobooth that too many of us had squeezed into on the last day of school the year before, all with red solo cups full of lemonade and wearing stupid hats and fake moustaches. In the last picture, I was pressing a hard kiss to Percy’s cheek. 

“Don’t you turn your phone off at night?” I murmured, not sure if he was awake, and realizing too late that to hear him, I’d have to roll over. Because I was now fucking deaf. My head hurt so bad. But I felt the vibration in his chest and raised my head. “What?”

His voice was slurred with sleep and he hooked an arm around me and pulled me away from the edge of the bed. “The settings,” he said. “I changed the settings a while ago.”

“What did you do to the settings?” 

“It doesn’t ring after ten,” he said, “Unless it’s you.”


	2. Neurology

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I still have no idea what i'm talking about or doing i'm just here for the angst.

My phone rang in the middle of third period English, which was strange. First because no one ever called me—it was too hard with my hearing aid, and too disorienting to have only one ear that fully worked pressed against my iPhone. Unless I could take the call on the Bluetooth in my car or somewhere private on speaker phone, I sent everything to a voicemail I never checked. 

Second because it was third period English. Even my father wouldn’t call to scream at me in the middle of my English class. 

And third because the call was coming from Percy. I glanced a few rows forward, at the empty seat he usually occupied. 

And now he was calling me in third period. I glanced down again, considering answering it, but he’d already hung up. "One Missed Call from Percy Newton (Knock Off John Boyega)" flashed up at me from the screen hidden in my pocket. 

The last time I’d seen Percy had been Saturday night, when I’d made him use the fake ID I'd given him for his birthday, which he hated, to get into this stupid gross club over on Mass Ave near Harvard, the sort of place where everything is either glittery or sticky or, upsettingly, both. Which he also hated. He’d been pissy I’d made him come, and then pissy I’d had what he deemed too much to drink and then done exactly what I’d promised him I wouldn’t do if he came, which was abandon him for a more lively group. But Percy wasn’t drinking at all so he was definitely not being fun. And maybe I was sort of pissy too. I was definitely tipsy. He’d told me he was sick. He had a headache. He was going home, and I should come with him. And when I’d said no, he was lying just to try and get me to stop having fun, he’d snatched my car keys out of my pocket—I’d had one confusingly exciting moment of thinking he was angling to give me a hand job—and said he was going to drive my car back to my place since I was too drunk, and I could get an Uber but he was going home. 

He’d turned to go, down the hallway of the club, and I think he expected me to catch up to him and agree that yes, I was too drunk and it was too late and I was definitely having an allergic reaction to this body glitter, but instead I’d shouted after him, “Well fuck you then!” Which was easier than saying it felt like he was throwing it in my face that he actually had a home he was happy to go to, and enough self control to be in a room full of alcohol and not drink it. Or felt like he needed it to get through the weekend.

He flipped me off as he walked away, without turning around, and not in the nice playful way we sometimes did in the school hallways. I wanted to shout after him to come back, I didn’t mean it, but also I had. I wanted to punch something. I wanted to go lay down on the tracks of the red line train station a few blocks away and just wait. That last thought kept coming more and more frequently and was getting harder to shake. I wanted to drink enough that I stopped thinking about that last one. That’s what I ended up doing, and spent the night at a dark apartment in Alston with a girl from BU who was definitely a decade older than me but I didn’t tell her and she didn’t ask. I left the next morning before she got up, and had texted Percy on the T back to Harvard Yard that I wasn’t dead, thanks for asking. 

Nothing. 

I’d texted him a few hours later to ask where my car keys were because I couldn’t find them and my dad would kill me if I lost them.

Nothing. 

I had started to panic. Percy could hold a grudge, but he could also let it go as soon as there were any real stakes involved. He never messed about with me when he was concerned my dad would get involved. 

I found the keys, I texted him an hour later. "Way to hide them WAY TOO EFFECTIVELY in our flower bed." 

I’d texted him a picture of my keys covered in dirt after he’d literally buried them in one of the planters on our front porch. "Over achiever," I had captioned it. 

Nothing.

"Fine," I’d finally texted him that night, after a day holed up in my room rewatching Arrested Development on my laptop when I should have been writing my paper for biology and stewing about what an asshole Percy was being to ghost me like this. "Fine," I’d finally texted him. "You’re pissed at me, whatever. You could at least tell me to fuck off." 

Nothing. 

Well fuck you then, I had texted him just before bed, then turned off my phone and threw it across the room. 

I was late for school the next morning, having failed to set an alarm after tossing my phone. When I got to English class, third period, Percy wasn’t there. 

Now it was Friday and he still hadn’t texted me. And he still wasn’t here. 

I’d kept texting him, first playing like I didn't care and was just harassing him because I was mad. Then I tried calling. I’d tagged him in some bullshit on Instagram just hoping I’d get a notification that he’d read the fucking message. I checked his page obsessively but he didn't post. I started to text him things more along the lines of "Hey why aren't you in school?" and "You missed Callum's legit insane promposal to my sister today, she's so embarrassed." My dad had been home all week and immediately taken my car keys when he found out I was late Monday morning, or else I would have tried going over. When I had asked a few of his orchestra friends—our social groups overlapped only because Percy was friends with everyone and I could usually be recognized as “Percy’s friend”— if they knew where he was, and they’d replied “We thought you’d know.” I was Percy’s friend after all. 

And now he was calling me in the middle of English class. 

In my pocket, I felt my phone buzz, the quick tone alerting me to a missed call. Mr. Jessop, the head of the English department had a policy of not issuing hall passes for any reason, so I faked a coughing fit until he finally said, “For god’s sake, Mr. Montague, get yourself some water.” 

I’d leapt to my feet, phone pressed against my palm, and dialed the number back almost before I was out in the hall. I leaned against a set of lockers across from the drama room, watching through the windows as the cast of the spring musical rehearsed something with gold top hats swinging wildly through the air. Percy was playing in the pit. The orchestra teacher, who I had never spoken to before, had stopped me in the hall the day before to ask me if I knew where he was. 

The ring was interrupted mid ring, and I was shocked by a woman’s voice. “Henry?” 

I was equal parts surprised and grateful I hadn’t greeted him with a “Listen, fucker,” which had been my initial plan. “Mrs. Powell?” I stammered. 

“Yes, hello!” There was a crackle on the other end as Percy’s aunt readjusted her grip on his phone. Which must have been a big upgrade from the flip phone she still used by choice. “I’m so sorry, I just realized you’re in school. I hope I didn’t get you in trouble.”

“Free period,” I said, though our school didn’t have them. “Is Percy okay?” 

A pause. I had asked it more just to be polite—I was pretty sure he was just really dramatically avoiding me—but that pause made my stomach drop. “Mrs. Powell?” 

“I was calling,” she said. “Because I was hoping you might be able to collect any work that Percy missed this week for him.” 

“Sure,” I said, even though I knew I wouldn’t. He’d probably be caught up on his own before I had managed to make it to all his classes on top of my own. “Where’s he been?” 

“I know he’s concerned about the orchestra music in particular,” she said like she hadn’t heard me. “He said something about the schedule for musical rehearsals? Could you get him that?” 

“Where’s Percy?” I must have said it louder than I thought because one of the drama kids looked up and our eyes met across the hall. She smiled before returning to her dance. 

Another long, long pause. Then Mrs. Powell out a long sigh. It almost sounded like static. “We’ve been at MGH with him for most of the week.” 

“The hospital?” I doubled over, back against the lockers. “Why? What’s happened? Is he okay?” 

“Well.” Even over the phone, I could feel the ooze of her discomfort. The Newton-Powells weren’t known for discussing hard things. Or feelings. Or hard feelings. I had never noticed how much time it left in conversation for the more fatalistic of us to fill in the gaps ourselves with hypotheticals. “On Sunday morning, he woke up saying he wasn’t feeling very well. Nothing serious, just a migraine. Honestly I thought he was a big hung over.” 

“He didn’t drink,” I said quickly. “He was out with me.”

“I know, which is why I assumed.” 

Awesome. I was starting to get a reputation even with Percy’s aunt. “So he had a migraine,” I prompted. Percy got them all the time. He was already prone to headaches after too long spent reading music notes that were too small and he refused to wear glasses or contacts because he said he didn’t need them but really I just think he didn’t like the way he looked on him. He’s vainer than he’ll admit. 

“Yes. A headache. All right then let’s see…” I swear I hear her tapping her acrylic nails against something. “It would have been about…oh goodness sometime around eleven because I was down in the kitchen making lunch. It must have been those chicken skewers because I think Thomas was just about to go turn on the grill and I thought, I’ll go up and check on Percy in case he’s hungry. They’re good chicken skewers. I think you’ve had them at our place before.” 

“Sounds delicious.” Oh my god this woman is the worst story teller ever. Percy and I have joked before about his aunt giving you literally every detail you don’t need and none of the ones you do but I’d never really noticed it until now, maybe because it was the first time she had something to say that I really wanted to hear and her puttering is giving me the chance to come up with a thousand scenarios on my own of what probably happened. By the time we actually get through lunch, I’ll have convinced myself he’s dead. “Why is Percy in the hospital?” 

Another pause. Then she asked, “Are you sure you want to hear about this? I don’t want to worry you.” 

Of course I fucking do, I wanted to snap, but I just said “Yes.” 

“He had a seizure. Do you know what that—”

“Yes.” 

“It was the kind where…I can’t remember what we’re supposed to call them now. The doctor told us. There’s some new term for the type of seizure, the bad one where you lose consciousness and start shaking. Dang it, what are they called? We didn’t call them that when I was a girl.” 

“I know what a seizure is.” 

“Right of course. So. Gosh what happened then? We were all a bit frantic.” She let out a nervous laugh. “He had a seizure and so we took him in to the ER and they kept him for a few hours and thought everything was fine, these things sometimes just happen. Especially around this age, something about hormones or…hold on, I wrote it down.” 

“No, don’t—”

“Oh! Tonic clonic. I think that’s what it’s called. I wrote it on my checkbook since I didn’t have any paper.” 

I clenched my teeth. “Okay sure whatever.” 

“So we went to the ER but they didn’t seem too worried because he was conscious and siting up and talking a little after we got there, and we were about to go home and then… he had another one and it was the kind where it doesn’t stop—hold on, I wrote that down too.”

“It’s fine, please—” 

“—and he stopped breathing.”

I had also stopped breathing. I was sitting on the floor against the lockers, my head between my knees, trying to remember how to breathe and all I could think about was that the last thing I had said to Percy was fuck you. 

Mrs. Powell was still talking. “The doctor said that two seizures in such a short amount of time is usually indicative of something more serious, like a tumor or a stroke or a brain cancer.” 

Oh my god. Percy has a brain tumor. Percy’s dead. 

The phone line crackled as she sighed. “So we’ve been at MGH most of the week going through all the tests and trying to figure out what’s going on so they can treat him. They’ve got him on a lot of medications to stop the seizures and that’s been really hard on him. And the tests are just brutal, this poor boy. I just wish…But we want to make sure when he comes back to school—”

“I’ll bring him the homework,” I interrupted. “Can you tell me what room he’s in at MGH?” 

A pause. Then, “Sweetheart, I know the two of you are friends, but he’s not really up for visitors.” 

Friends seems like far too small a word in that moment and I know she knows it. I wouldn’t be hyperventilating on the floor of my high school hallway if Percy and I were just friends. “I’d really like to see him.” 

“I know but he doesn’t want to see anyone right now. He’s having a hard time.” 

Something stabbed me in the leg and I realized my car keys were in my pocket. I had my car keys and my wallet and my backpack was in Jessop’s classroom but someone would pick it up for me and so what if they didn’t. Suddenly all those very expensive textbooks we’d been lectured about protecting with our lives and the essay I’d written half drunk at two am the night before but upon which my biology grade hinged didn’t matter. I staggered to my feet and took off down the hallway toward the parking lot. “Where at MGH are you?” I asked, though I was sure I could figure it out if she didn’t tell me. “For the homework.” 

“Me? I’m at home now. Trying to shower and eat some not hospital food. You can bring it here after school.” 

“Cool sure I’ll do that.” I hit the door to the parking lot with my shoulder, already clicking furiously at the autolock button on the key until I was close enough that my Tesla beeped. I sank into the front seat and punched the ignition. The car purred to life, transferring Mrs. Powell to the Bluetooth so that I could drop the phone from my ear and navigate away from the call screen, pulling up Chrome and typing MGH Neurology department into the search bar and letting the address feed into my GPS. Mrs. Powell’s voice was temporarily interrupted by Siri instructing me to proceed to the highlighted route. 

Mrs. Powell paused. “Henry, you aren’t driving right now are you?” 

“What? No. Free period. Remember. I’m…at the library.” 

“Turn left onto Massachusetts Avenue,” Siri said. 

I fumbled for the volume on the dashboard. Don’t not blow this for me, you son of a bitch, I mentally hissed at her. 

“I’ll bring it by the house tonight see you then bye,” I said, then hit the end call button as I speed out of the parking lot. 

“Turn left on—”

“Hey Siri,” I interrupted, and she went quiet. I clench the steering wheel. “Google causes of seizures.” 

Crashing my fucking car because I was googling medical conditions while driving to see Percy in the hospital would have been the ultimate irony, but somehow I made it alive, and only ran two stop signs and a few yellow lights accelerated into. 

I thought I’d have to do some sweet talking to find out where Percy was, but by a stroke of miraculous luck, the elevator from the parking garage opened and I almost smashed into his cousin as he stepped out. “Luke!” I said. 

Luke glanced up from the screen of his phone. I hadn’t seen him since the summer before, his last year before law school. His face was leaner and he had a scruffy beard, though I realized that was probably from being at the hospital because it didn’t look very lawyerly. I also realized that if Luke had taken a break from law school to come down from New York, this was worse than I thought. And I was already pretty sure it was a fucking brain tumor. 

It took Luke a minute to recognize me. “Henry. Hey." His eyes flitted to my hearing aid, then away just as fast, and I remembered the last time I'd seen him was when Percy and I had had to explain to him why there was blood in his Prius after that night at Richard Peele's. "How are…Are you here to see Percy?” 

“Yeah, can you remind me what room he’s in?” I asked casually, shoving my phone into my pocket so he couldn’t see that I had the Web MD page for Meningitis pulled up. “Your aunt—Percy’s aunt, your mom—Mrs. Powell—told me and I forgot to write it down.” 

“338.” 

“Thanks man.” 

I stepped past him but he grabbed the elevator door as it started to close between us. “My dad just ran out to get lunch but he’ll be back in a minute, if you want to wait for him. He can give you more info about the diagnosis before you see Percy.” 

“Cool, thanks,” I said, knowing full well I would fucking not be waiting for Thomas Powell, the only human on earth who spoke slower than his wife. 

As the elevator doors started to shut between us, I heard Luke say, “I really don’t know if he’s up for visitors—” and then I punched the button for 3. 

I didn’t really ask anyone if I was allowed to be walking the hospital hallways, but no one stopped me. It was Boston, and I was a white dude with an expensive haircut and a Burberry jacket walking confidently. They probably would have let me into an operating room without question. I found room 338 easily. 

I really thought I was braced for anything. I really thought I was. And then it was so hardly anything and still so much that I almost doubled over. There were two beds in the room, the one by the door empty and Percy was in the one by the window, in a pale blue hospital gown with wires disappearing beneath its loose neckline. He—they—someone—had cut his hair. He’d been growing it in long curls on top with shaved sides, which was super fucking hot, but someone had shaved the top too and marked spots on his skin with marker. Several nodes with white gauze were stuck to his forehead. 

I had been prepared for him to be wrapped up and wired up and tubed up but the worst part was how he wasn’t. Other than the IV and the heart monitor, he looked normal. The same as he had dozens of times we’d woken up next to each other. Except he also somehow looked so not normal, like someone had let the air out of him. He looked so fucking tired and out of it and just…sick. It was the only word I could think of for it. Here I had been prepared for tubes and machines and hadn’t considered that he might look sick without any of them. 

Then he looked up and saw me in the doorway. 

I rapped one knuckle on the door frame. “Housekeeping.” 

“Shit. Fuck.” The bed was tipped at an angle, and he pushed himself up from a slump and threw his hands over his face. “What the fuck are you doing here?”  
It was so not the greeting I had been expecting. He couldn’t still be mad at me for Saturday, could he? I took a few shuffling steps into the room, feeling suddenly self conscious and out of place. “Well you haven’t been answering my calls and I was starting to worry there was someone else and I’d have to fight him.” 

He didn’t laugh. He also didn’t drop his hands. “How the hell did you find out?” 

“Your aunt called me. For homework. Which I brought none of, by the way.” 

“I told her I didn’t want to see—”

“She didn’t tell me to come,” I said quickly. “I just…did that.” Why the fuck was I here? What on earth did I think this was going to accomplish. He would have asked if he wanted me here but he so clearly didn’t. I almost turned and walked out. 

Percy made a noise that was too mean to be a laugh. He still had his face covered. “You’re so fucking tenacious.” 

“You could have called me.” 

“No, I literally couldn’t because I’ve been so drugged up and had such bad migraines I can’t hardly have the lights on, let alone look at screens and put together any kind of coherent message to you and also forgive me if you’re not my first fucking priority right now.”

“You could have asked your aunt to tell me. Or Luke.” 

“Didn’t you think maybe there was a reason I didn’t before you barged over here. Oh my god.” He rolled over, his back to me. It felt like asking me to leave with no words. So instead I took another step into the room. 

“I’ve been texting you all week. I thought you were mad at me.” 

“I am.”

“And then you weren’t at school.” 

“No shit, Sherlcok.” 

“Will you please look at me?” 

He pulled the pillow around his face. “No.”

“Why? Have you grown a third nose? Or I suppose it would be a second. I don’t know your life. Maybe this is all an elaborate plastic surgery cover up, in which case, respect, fake brain cancer is effective.”

“God Monty shut the fuck up!” 

I should have left then. I felt like I was going to cry. Instead I just stood there, feeling like I was wilting. “Sorry,” I said quietly. 

There was a long silence. Just go, I told myself. Just go, he doesn’t want you here. No one wants you around. 

But then Percy said, his back still to me, “It’s not brain cancer, dumbass.” 

“So it is the three noses?”

“Fuck, Monty.” 

“Sorry. I don’t…I don’t know what to say.” I didn’t want to admit I had been going out of my mind over his silence, and now that I was here, I wished I had just let it stay that way. 

Very slowly, Percy rolled over to face me, his hands away from his face. He had a cannula in his nose I hadn’t noticed from across the room, but now that I see it, I can hear the hiss of the oxygen tank attached to it. In and out. His eyes had dark circles under them. One side of his face was bruised, and his mouth was swollen, one lip split. There was a patch of gauze just below his collar bone, holding a knot of tubes in place, and a chunky IV taped into the crook of his arm. 

“It’s not brain cancer,” he said. “It’s epilepsy.” 

Don’t say something stupid, I told myself. Maybe just don’t say anything. I took way too long a pause to consider my words and then also consider how most people weren’t such inconsiderate morons at their core that they had to take this long to think about their words. Then I finally said, “I don’t know what that is.” 

He reached up and touched one of the nodes on his forehead, then pulled his hand away quickly, like he was trying to stop himself from yanking it off. “Basically my brain has fucked me over and is going to short circuit with no warning for the rest of my life and then…” He gestures down at himself. “Then this.” 

Don’t say it, I told myself and then of course I said, “Is it…are you going to die from it?” 

“No, I’m not going to die. I’m just fucked. I’m going to have to take ten fucking thousand pills every day for the rest of my life and get these fucking scans that cost like twenty thousand bucks every six months and I still might have seizures anyway because sometimes the medicines just randomly stop working and I can’t fucking swim or drive or live alone or take a fucking bath or go to clubs or see movies until they can figure out if light triggers this bullshit. You know why I didn’t call you? Because I’ve got a fucking catheter in. I’m on so many fucking drugs right now so I won't have another seizure and you know, stop breathing that sometimes I just piss myself like I’m a fucking kid and I’m sorry but you’re not really the person I want around when I’m pissing myself.”

Silence. The steady beat of a heart monitor. It felt far too slow. My own was hammering. My whole body felt numb. “I’ll go,” I said, and this time I actually turned for the door. 

But then behind me, Percy said, “No, don’t.” When I turned, he had his hands fisted around the bedsheets. “Sorry I’m...”

“Don’t be sorry.” 

“I’m being an asshole.” 

“I think it’s pretty justified. Unlike me, who is just…an asshole. For no reason.” 

“I should have called you,” he said. “Or had Luke do it. It’s just…so fucking embarrassing.”

“I’ve never heard you say fuck this much.” 

“Sorry. I’m angry.” 

“Don’t be sorry. It’s really sexy.” That got a smile out of him for the first time. It was very small and pretty half assed and may actually just have been a twitch, but I took it. “Do you want to break something? If you can them to put your IV on one of those wheely things I’ve got my tesla downstairs and I’m sure I could get a good insurance payout if someone smashed the wind shield. We could even do it with the wheely cart thing.” 

“You’re the fucking worst, you know that?” he said, but he was definitely smiling this time. 

“I’ve been told.” I still didn’t know what I should do—whether I should go or stay or sit down or start edging toward the door, so I asked, “So what happens now?” 

“They try to figure out what I have to take so that I’m not having seizures all the time. I shouldn't be such a dick. It's manageable. It's just chronic. And a pain in the ass. And stupid. But yeah. I take a lot of drugs and then I just…go back to life, I guess? Without driving or swimming.” 

“At least you don’t have to go to clubs with me anymore.” A horrible thought suddenly struck me and I asked tentatively, “That wasn’t…was it my fault? Because I made you go out with me.”

“No,” he shook his head. “My aunt already asked the doctors if that was it.” 

“Wow she’s a little too excited about definitive proof I’m a bad influence on you.” 

“It’s no one’s fault, it’s just my stupid fucking brain.” He stared down at his hands, pressing a nail into one of the calluses on his fingers from his violin. “Don’t tell anyone.”

“Tell anyone what?” 

“That I’m sick. That I have epilepsy.” He still said the word like he hated it. “Tell them I’ve had the flu or something. Or brain cancer.” 

“Ooo! Can we joke about it now?” 

“Give it like ten more minutes.”

I stuck my hands in my pockets. “I won’t tell anyone. But. You probably should tell a few people. Like, what if we’re at a party or something and you have a seizure, just so people know—”

But he shook his head. “I can’t. Not right now.” 

“Guess I’ll just have to keep me around forever then.”

“I was going to tell you. I promise.” 

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have barged in like this.” 

“Yeah that was kind of a dick move.” 

“I’m kind of a dick.” 

“I know. You’re in my phone as "Dickhead.”

“What?! I thought I was Poe Dameron because I’m pretty and badass and ethnically ambiguous in some lights!”

“I changed it back. Also brown hair and a good tan doesn't make you ethnically ambiguous.”

“Oh my god, your aunt called me from your phone." I was sincerely mortified. "How did she know I was dickhead in your phone??”

“Educated guess?" He smiled, then said, "I was. Going to tell you. I just didn’t want to do it like this.”

“You don’t have to lie.” 

“I’m not.”

“I probably wouldn’t have told me.” 

“I would have.” 

“It’s fine, Percy, I don’t care.” 

I didn’t meant for it to come out like that. Especially when so much the opposite was true. Percy pressed his chin to his chest so I couldn’t see his face, and I couldn’t tell what he was going to say. 

“I didn’t mean I don’t care,” I said quickly, as much as I was trying to make myself shut up. “I just meant, if you didn’t want to tell me that’s okay, I’m not hurt or mad or anything, it’s your life and you don’t have to tell me everything obviously and I’m sorry I sort of invited myself into this and Percy I do care, I care so fucking much it’s kind of ridiculous. Sometimes I feel like I’ve forgotten how to care about anything but you. Or like all the care I’m supposed to feel about things like school and college and shit has all gotten reallocated to you cause I just care about you so fucking much.” 

And then he started to cry. I had never seen Percy cry like that before, and I’d known him since we were kids. He fell off the highest slide on the playground and broke his arm when we were six and didn’t cry like this. And suddenly I don’t feel awkward or weird or like I have to make a joke or have no idea what to say. It’s like suddenly we’re just us again. I don’t know if it’s technically allowed but I don’t really fucking care—I climbed up onto the bed next to him and wrapped an arm around his waist and let him cry with his head against my chest. 

“Monty…” He asked after a minute, nudging the side of my face with his nose. The front of my shirt was damp. “Do you have lipstick on your neck?”

“What?” I yanked up the collar of my polo without thinking. “No.” 

“Oh my god," he groans with a watery laugh. "I wasn’t even gone for a week.” 

“Okay but I get bored when you’re gone and make bad decisions!” 

“Like letting someone neck you between classes and then not washing it off.” 

I rubbed the offending spot on my neck. “It’s, um…”

He pressed an elbow into me. “Come on, tell me. Whose lipstick is that?” 

“Um I think it’s a hickey because he definitely wasn’t wearing lipstick.”  
Silence. To his credit, the heart rate monitor doesn’t start beeping faster. If I’d been wearing one it would have been a fucking dance beat.

All he says is, “Oh.” 

And of course stupid me I have to talk to fill up the silence. “So yeah I keep meaning to tell you that.”

“That your boyfriend doesn’t wear lipstick?” 

“No. I mean, I don’t have a boyfriend. But I might. Someday. Or maybe a girlfriend. Or just like a partner because fuck the binary. This doesn’t mean I’m going to start wearing glitter eyeshadow and buy heels and leading pride parades or make the school board let me take a dude to prom. And I’m not going to put it in my twitter bio or anything. And maybe that makes me a bad gay—or you know whatever I am, cause by the way it’s totally impossible to look this shit up on tumblr without realizing that now a lot of people have a lot of really specific ideas about how to be the right kind of gay, which I’m not even sure if I am. I mean, I don’t know if I’m gay, there’s probably a different word I should be using. I thought maybe bisexual but then I saw some asshole on twitter getting really worked up about how no one should use that label bisexual because it means there’s a binary of gender and I just really don’t get any of this stuff and it’s all overwhelming. But I’m just…pretty not straight. So. Yeah. I kept meaning to tell you that.” 

Silence again, a very loud silence. The in and out of his breath through the oxygen tube. The tap of his heartbeat. It could have been mine too. It felt suddenly weird to be the only person in the room living without evidence. 

Then Percy ssid, “You already own heels.” When I start to protest, he gives me a look. “Do you have any idea how many times I’ve gone through your closet looking for a clean t-shirt or some socks or something. They’re Gucci and they’re black leather but faux snakeskin which by the way is redundant and kind of weird, with gold buckles and the heel is about yay high.” He held up his fingers in measurement. 

“You fucker.” 

He laughed. “They’re cute. You should wear them. But if you don’t want to, you don’t have to." He picked at the edge of the medical tape holding his IV in place. "If it helps, I don’t think I am either.” 

“Not what?” I asked. 

“Totally straight." He shrugged. He was so much calmer about this than I felt. The slow beep of his pulse is confirming it as well which is really fucking aggravating. "I mean, I don’t think anyone is, so I wasn’t ever going to make a big thing about it. Just sort of find who I liked and then date them if they wanted to.” 

Silence again. Out in the hallway, a nurse passed with a cart, its wheels squeaking loudly.  
Then I said, "You dick." 

Percy let out a sputtering laugh. “What?”

“Did you just steal my coming out?” 

“I thought we could share it!” 

“It’s not a fucking cake!” 

“Oh I know, if it was a cake you absolutely wouldn’t share it.” 

“Fuck you." I twisted awkwardly on the bed so I could fish my phone out my pocket. "I’m changing your name in my phone to “Coming Out Stealer.”” 

“I had a lumbar puncture yesterday. Cut me some slack.” He pause. “Don’t google lumbar puncture.” 

“I’m not.” 

“I know you are.” 

“I’m changing your name in my phone to—”

“I can see your screen.” 

“I’m not—" Google finished loading search results and I screeched. "Holy shit!” 

“Yeah. It sucked.” 

“Oh my god it’s so much worse when you click images!” 

“Why the hell would you click images of a medical procedure I just told you was horrible?” 

“Because I have no self-control! I had to stop listening to that murder podcast because I'm too much of a Georgia and kept googling all the crime scene photos, remember? Fuck.” I tossed my phone to the end of the bed like it’s on fire. “You can keep my coming out. You fucking deserve it.” I paused, then reach down and snatched my phone back. “Okay now I’m actually changing you in my phone.” I hold up the screen for him to see. He flinches like I’m shining a flashlight into his face. “Shit, sorry, I forgot.” I press my phone against my chest.

“It’s fine, I’m just a little photosensitive right now.” 

“Aw like a plant.” I remembered suddenly that I was supposed to be in biology right now, and that my probably-incoherent-thanks-to-vodka term paper is in my bag in Jessop’s English class. “Shit.” 

“What?” 

“I had a biology essay I didn’t turn in.” 

He twisted around to look at me. “Yeah aren’t you supposed to be in school right now?” 

“Aren’t you?” 

“You better fucking pass biology." He bites my shoulder, then presses his cheek against it. "I’m going to need a roommate at Harvard to make sure I don’t drown in the bathtub.” 

“I don’t think Harvard will want me.” 

“They will.” 

“Nah, now that Lori Loughlin ruined that whole buying your way into college thing for us rich dicks, I think my only chance into the Ivy League has fallen through.”

“Well they’ll want me and I’ll put a condition on my application that I’m only coming if you can come too.” His voice was getting fuzzy, and when I glanced over at him, I could tell he was having a hard time keeping his eyes open. His chin dipped.

“So I’m like your emotional support dog?" I asked. "Oh my god, do you get one of those dogs with the vests to tell you if you’re going to have a seizure? Can I name him? Tugboat. No, Barkley. No, I'll have to meet him first. Or can we just get a normal dog and tell people it’s your service dog so we can have a dog at Harvard?”

“That’s definitely illegal,” he murmured 

“If we’re going to room together at Harvard, I demand you get a service dog. Can it be a corgi? A service corgi?” 

“I don’t think those exist.” 

“Corgis definitely exist.” 

“Seizure sniffing corgis.” 

“I’m googling it.” 

He pushes himself down on the bed as I pull out my phone, his head against my arm. I wondered if he would fall asleep. But then he asked, “What did you change me to in your phone?” 

“I’ll wait until you can read it yourself. Wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise.” 

He closed his eyes. “Is it a cancer joke?” 

I glanced down at my phone, at the open screen of our texts from the last week—the last one from my two am vodka haze the morning before. "I’m sorry please just talk to me I fucking miss you." All of them are now labeled Messages with Hazel Grace Lancaster. 

“Just a small one.”


	3. Harvard Health Services

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *******Important: This chapter is from Percy's point of view!******** 
> 
> also TW: Panic attacks

Monty and my first year at Harvard was great. 

It was great. Super great. Except that Monty was addicted to pills and I couldn’t breathe and we definitely both should have been in therapy, but other than that it was totally great. 

Totally absolutely super fucking great. 

Due to some creative maneuvering and likely a well-timed donation from Mr. Montague Sr. to the alumni association, Monty had been awarded a place in the freshman class at Harvard in spite of a fairly abysmal final year of high school. Though he really can’t be blamed for it. It was hard for him to focus on a 7:30 am organic chemistry class when he was debating whether or not it was worth his father seeing a claim on his insurance if he went to the emergency room to make sure his appendix hadn’t ruptured when his jackass father had pushed him off the first landing of their staircase. Monty himself had admitted to me the admission had felt both miraculous and totally not deserved. I told him to get over it, accept the offer, and get the fuck out of his dad’s house, even if the main Harvard campus was only a few miles down the road from Chateau de Montague. 

My admission was less unexpected but far more tenuous. My aunt and uncle had made it clear from the first time I had mentioned Harvard aspirations that it was not a school in their price range, though they had managed to send my cousin to NYU and then Columbia for law school while also paying most of his New York City rent. But it’s fine. I’m not their kid. My dad died in the navy when I was too young to remember him, and if he’d left any money to me, I think it was probably eaten up by the last year and a half of insane hospital bills. So I had hustled my ass off in high school, gotten up at 5 am to be at school in a practice room with my violin at 6 every fucking day, applied for every scholarship and grant and figured out the fucking FAFSA on my own and tried not to resent Monty for how easy he had gotten his spot, and then tried not to feel guilty for resenting my best friend who was going through a totally different but equally hellish senior year as I was. 

So I had gotten into Harvard, and thought the knot in my chest would finally loosen. But then I realized getting in was just the start. Then I had to stay in, and stay qualified for all my scholarships. I couldn’t just get good grades, I had to get the best grades. I couldn’t pass most classes, I had to pass them all. And as the black semi-adopted kid of very white middle-class Bostonians, I thought I had gotten used to this. But it’s fucking Harvard. I was reminded of this every day, on every sign and every flier and every sweatshirt of every tourist I passed in the Yard with their cameras out, following a tour guide dressed as a revolutionary colonist and carrying a tiny flag on a retractable antenna. 

It’s Harvard, Percy, my entire world seemed to scream at me. So don’t fuck this up. Practice until your fingers bleed, read music theory until your eyes cross, sleep library, ignore the way your chest got tighter and tighter every day we crept closer to finals because you couldn’t afford to miss a day—let alone a week or a month—holed up in a beige half-curtained room at Mass General Hospital. 

Starting at Harvard marked year and a half since my epilepsy diagnosis, and it took almost that long to figure out exactly what incredibly precise and rigorous routine of medications treat it. But after six months seizure free, I had started to earn back the small privileges I had lost after that horrific week my junior year. I could drive again. Go to movies, because three fucking EEGs had finally ruled out that it was photosensitive. I was even allowed to go swimming, so long as there was a life guard on duty who was made aware of my condition before I got in the pool. I had never cared much for the water before, but as soon as I’d been told I could swim again, I’d become obsessed with it. I swam laps almost every morning, and all the lifeguards at the Harvard pool knew me. This is the kid who might drown but probably not but keep an eye on him any way. We all tried to pretend it was normal. 

I had thought at first that the swimming was the reason for the tightening feeling in my chest that was growing more and more persistent. Maybe it was too long in the water, too long holding my breath and breathing irregularly (I’m still not a good swimmer, just an enthusiastic one) that had made it start to feel like my ribcage was shrinking and pressing in against my lungs. It had been there all semester, but as the first week of December—our last before finals—crawled around, it stopped going away. It became more common for me to wake up and immediately struggle to take a breath than to start the day fine and then grow tenser as it went along. 

I kept thinking I needed to tell someone, though the idea of more hospitals and doctors and constant panic of oh my god is the seizure medication actually not working kept me silent. I should have at least told Monty. I had always told each other everything, and I was trying so hard to pretend this was nothing that it would have been easy to drop it into a conversation as a casual FYI, along with “I’m having some friends over to study tonight” or “I’m staying with my aunt and uncle this weekend.” 

But in spite of being roommates, I had seen less of him than I had in high school. Which I guess I should have expected. We were in two different programs with drastically different class schedules. Though he seemed to be putting even less energy into getting to those classes than he had in high school. Not because he was lazy—there were a thousand words I’d use to describe Monty before I’d use lazy. If I had to guess, I would have said it has something to do with both the fact that he thought his father was the only reason he was here—both because he had gotten him in, and because Monty hadn’t had a choice. His father had gone to Harvard. His grandfather had gone to Harvard. And he was only a few miles from home so his father could keep an eye on him. Though that didn’t seem to matter either. I still could hear it through the door when his father called. I couldn’t hear Montague Sr.’s voice. But Monty’s was completely different when he spoke to his father. He sounded so much younger. And then usually after they hung up, he locked himself in the bathroom for a while and came out jittery with dilated pupils. I’d never known him to sit still—in another life, with responsible parents, he probably would have gotten both an ADHD diagnosis and medication for it much earlier in life—but his energy had begun to swing into manic bursts that he channeled into nights out in the clubs populating Harvard Square and the partners he went with. 

By the last week of the semester, he was on his third partner, though I wasn’t sure he would have called the first two his boyfriend or girlfriend, though they certainly would have. Monty unintentionally had that effect on people, and was notoriously bad at having the DTR talk. Most of his break ups had involved conversation in which Monty protested that he had never thought they were exclusive, and I truly didn’t think he had. I had once googled just out of curiosity if a history of abuse could affect your attention span, and if that attention span could extend to romantic partners. Google had been inconclusive, and I’d felt weird trying to diagnosis my best friend. But it would have explained a lot.

His newest girlfriend seemed to be sticking though. He’d been with her since the start of November. She was named Helena, and she had hair from a Pantene commercial and a father with some kind of automobile empire in Europe. She was getting a masters degree in art history, and she was six years older than him and several inches taller and pretty enough that neither of them got carded when they went out together.

I…did not love Helena. She was pushy and surly and seemed indifferent to Monty in a way no one had a right to be to the most magnetic fucking person I knew, but that seemed to only make his pursuit of her more enthusiastic. He wasn’t used to having to work in love. 

I didn’t like Helena. But I also hadn’t liked Sinjon, the English boy Monty had met at orientation who had only come out the month before and who it was immediately apparent Monty was just too much for. And I hadn’t really liked the dark skinned Pakistani boy, Ebbie, either. I also was not too keen on the few visits we’d had from good old Dick Peele, who was taking a “gap year” and who I was pretty sure was Monty’s dealer. His visits almost always coincided with an increase in the number of plastic bags of unmarked pills I would find stashed around our apartment

There were lots of reasons none of them were right for Monty. Or maybe I just worked so hard to prove that with actual concrete evidence so I could keep pretending it wasn’t just because I was starting to worry he really wasn’t ever going to figure out how much I liked him. Or that he’d already figured it out and was purposely avoiding it. 

Turns out it’s really fucking hard to live with the person you’ve been in love with for as long as you can remember. Basically since I became aware of what it meant to love someone. 

But he was dating someone. And I was dating someone, for fuck’s sake. And she was nice. And it was definitely not an absolute stab of agony when Penny and I would be having breakfast at our tiny kitchen table in the morning and I had just about convinced myself that I might actually really like her and not just like her as a human in my music theory class who I got along well with, then fucking Monty would roll out of his bedroom in no shoes, a t shirt that fits him like his own skin and pajama bottoms slung low on his hips (and very obviously not wearing underwear though I tried not to look to hard at that). And that gorgeous thick curly hair standing up on the back of his head and that sleepy uneven smile and how I would think as I stared into my coffee and Penny ate cereal across from me, totally oblivious to the fact that I was half hard, was he so goddamn hot? Even when I watched him add whiskey to his coffee at seven in the morning when he thought I wasn’t looking and when he stretches his arms behind his head, I can see bruises along his ribs and I’m not sure if they’re because Helena likes it rough (possible, based on the thin walls) or because he went home this past week for Thanksgiving and his father was there. It’s harder to ignore that scar just above his hip bone from when I finally talked him into going to the fucking hospital when he was in so much pain he couldn’t stand up and yep, he had to get his appendix out before it fucking killed him. 

I’m going to fucking kill his dad. I swear to god. It’s literally the only thing I’d be willing to risk this scholarship for: murder. 

It was a rare morning that neither Helena or Penny wasn’t over at the apartment and I got Monty to myself. Rarer still that I get him sober and awake before ten am. But the Saturday before finals week, he was somehow up before I was, curled up on the couch wearing his glasses and the Florence+the Machine shirt we’d passed back and forth since we were fifteen. I was so surprised I stopped in the doorway to the kitchen. “What are you doing?” 

He glanced up from his phone. “Having coffee. Want some? I made a whole pot.” 

“Do you have any idea what time it is?” 

He narrowed his eyes at me like this was a trick question. “Eight thirty?” 

“And you know that’s eight thirty in the morning, right?” 

He threw a pillow at me. “Better claim that coffee before I pour it out just to spite you. 

He pulled his feet off the sofa so I could sit down next to him with my coffee and my textbook, and I thought he’d turn so we would both be sitting forward with our heels on the coffee table, but instead, once I was settled, he draped his legs over my lap, so fucking casual about it he didn’t even look up from his phone. 

The only way to keep myself from spinning off into some fantasy was to make a joke so I poked his big toe with the end of my pen. “I like the color.” 

“What?” He glanced up at his toenails, painted royal blue. “Thanks. Helena did them.” 

“How romantic,” I replied, and it must have come out nastier than I meant because he gave me a look before returning to his phone. I could see in the reflection of his glasses that he was scrolling mindlessly through Instagram and somehow that made me furious. We had finals next week and he was on Instagram. 

“What’s your first final?” I asked, trying to sound casual as I swapped my coffee mug for my textbook. 

“Uh. I don’t remember.” 

“Seriously?” I said, irritated. 

“I’ve got it written down somewhere.” 

“Better remember where.” 

He frowned up at me again. “What’s yours?” 

“Music theory. First thing Monday.” I held up the text book so he could see the cover. 

“You’ll be fine then.” 

I laughed. I could feel my chest getting tighter. I’d woken that morning to the pain of it, which wasn’t something that had happened before. I’d thought at first I’d had a seizure in my sleep because that was the only time I could remember being aware of pain before I was aware of being awake. But no, it was just my malfunctioning lungs. 

Think about it after finals, I told myself, and tried to take a deep breath. And totally failed. I got about halfway through before it felt like my lungs had reached the capacity of my chest and strained it. I rubbed a spot on my breastbone absently. 

“I don’t think I’ll be fine.” 

“You can do music theory in your sleep.” 

“I can play the violin. I’ve never really studied this stuff.” 

“You mean like this is a music note and here I will play it for you give me an A.” 

I could feel my muscles going tense, though less in anger and more in the way I sometimes felt in big crowds. Too much. 

It’s not too much! I scolded myself. You’re alone in your quiet living room with Monty and you have had zero caffeine this morning and none of this is too much. You’re fine. 

So I just said, “Sure, whatever.” And I turned back to my book. I could feel Monty staring at me a few moments longer and I wondered if he’d say something, but then we went back to silence. 

I keep trying to focus on the page in front of me but I can’t take an actual breath deep enough for my lungs to feel full and it’s hard to focus on anything when you can breathe. 

Monty dug his toes into my thigh. “You all right?” He asked without looking up from his phone. His coffee was balanced precariously between his knees. 

“Fine,” I said. “Why?”

“You sound like you have a chest cold.” He tapped his fist against his chest. “Or like you’ve been running.”

“I’m fine.”

“Did you swim this morning?”

“I’m trying to read.” 

He raised his hands in surrender, and he still hadn’t looked up from his goddamn phone. I could smell the alcohol in the steam off his coffee and suddenly I was angry.  
I shut my book and dropped it on the coffee table, then turned to him, shoving his feet off my lap. “Can I have some of your coffee?”

“No.” He snatched it from between his legs and clutched it to his chest, spilling some down the front of his shirt. “There’s still some left.” 

“I don’t want to get up.” I held out a hand. There was a faint tremor in my fingers. I ignored it. “Let me have some of yours.”

“I’ll get it for you.” 

“Just give me some of yours.”

“You sound like you’re sick,” he said, dropping his phone on the couch and pushing himself up. “I don’t want to get sick.” 

I stared at the back of his head as he crossed over to the kitchen, separated from the living room by a small bar. “Do you think you’re fucking fooling me?” I called. 

He stopped, still for long enough that I knew he was debating whether this fight would be worth it. 

And then apparently decided it was because he turned around. “Excuse me?”

“Do you think you’re fooling anyone?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“You smell like you showered in vodka.”

“I went out last night.”

“Yeah, I heard you come in at three in the fucking morning. You woke me up.

“Sorry."

"If you're going to stay out all night, at least try and come in quietly. Or tell me so I know where you are." 

"Okay then: Percy, I went out last night. I had a drink.”

“And then you never stopped.” I pointed my pen at his coffee. “It’s an interesting cocktail choice, I’ll give you that.” 

“What the fuck? I don’t have to fucking tell you where I go. You’re not my mother.”

“Your mother doesn’t give a shit where you are, but someone’s got to, so I’m sorry I do.” 

It was definitely too far. He pulled his glasses off and pressed a hand to his face, then jammed them back on and snapped, “You know what, fuck you. I’m going back to bed.” He tossed his coffee cup in the sink hard enough I’m shocked the mug doesn’t shatter, then stormed into his room, the door slamming behind him. 

I stare at his bedroom door like something is going to happen. Why the fuck did you say that? Why did you do that? Why did you why did you why did you say that you were having such a nice fucking morning and then you had to fucking ruin it why did you say that you asshole? 

And suddenly my chest wasn’t just tight. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t force a breath into my lungs. My heart was racing, harder than it ever beat when I swam or ran. It was beating so hard it hurt. I doubled over with my head between my knees, trying to breathe, trying not to pass out. My text book slipped off my lap and crashed to the floor, pages creasing and I couldn’t figure out how to make myself pick it because all I could think about is that that I couldn’t breathe. The tips of my fingers felt numb. My heart was going to explode. 

Was I having a heart attack? I was nineteen fucking years old and I was having a heart attack because my body hadn’t been enough of an asshole to me. It couldn’t be a seizure. If this were the aura of a seizure, I wouldn’t be conscious. I wouldn’t remember this. Or maybe this was some kind of new seizure that had figured out how to beat my medication and suddenly I was sure I was about to have a seizure except I was going to be forced to stay conscious for the entire thing. 

Or I was dying. Suddenly I was certain I was dying. I didn’t know why or what from but I was dying. I knew it and it only made everything worse. I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes. I didn’t know how long it had been since I’d taken a breath and I was about to die. 

And then I heard Monty’s bedroom door open. “Did I leave my ph—”

Sit up, I thought, nonsensically. Everything’s fine. Don’t let him know you’re about to die. 

“Shit. Percy?” 

Too fucking late. 

I couldn’t make myself move. I couldn’t look at him. I just stayed doubled over on the sofa, tear at my hair and gasping. 

“Holy shit.” He was kneeling in front of me suddenly, trying to pry my hands away from my face so he could look in my eyes. When we’d decided to move in together, he’d been briefed by my aunt and my doctor and my uncle and then my aunt again one more time for good measure about the signs I was about to have a seizure. Vertigo and headaches and, most importantly, I couldn’t focus. As my aunt scientifically described it, his eyes go funny. 

I couldn’t stand to look at him, I was so fucking embarrassed I was dying. God, I was such a lunatic. 

Monty, shockingly, had taken on a steely calm I’d never seen him exhibit in a crisis before. “Do you know where you are?” he asked, and I nodded. I could feel him check off cognitive functions from the seizure warning signs list in his head. “Can you talk?” 

I tried to say I’m okay, and then hopefully also tell him to go back to his room and let me die in peace, but I couldn’t even get a word out. Instead all I got was a jerky gasp that racked my whole body. 

And somehow, Monty knew what to do. “Right, come here, lie down on the floor, the tile’s cooler. Take my arm. I don’t want you to fall.” 

I was lying on the floor without realizing it, staring up at the recessed lighting. “I’ll be right back,” I heard Monty say, and suddenly the only thing worse than having him there was not having him there. 

“No.” I snatched out wildly and managed to catch a handful of the back of his t shirt as he stood. Another gasping, ugly word. “Please.” 

“I promise, I’ll be right back,” he said, his voice very gentle. “I’m getting a washcloth. Count to ten and I’ll be back.” 

And then he was, with a wet washcloth and warning me before he pressed against my face. I hadn’t realized how hot I was until my skin met the cold. I shivered. Or maybe I was shaking. I still wasn’t sure when the last time I had taken a proper breath was. 

And then he was sitting on the floor next to me with one hand against my stomach, telling me to try and breathe from there. “Just think about breathing,” he was saying. “Do it with me. Count to ten. You’re okay. You’re okay, I promise, just breathe.” 

It took three tries, but I managed to take a breath that lasted the full ten counts. And then another. 

“You’re doing good,” he said, and shifted the washcloth from my forehead to my chest, over the neck of my t shirt. “Can you talk to me a little?”   
I tried to tell him I could but I wasn’t sure what came out of me. It must have been intelligible enough because he said, “Can you tell me three things you can see? Do you remember Sinjon? He told me his therapist used to make him do that when he'd get anxious. Focus on three things you can see from where you are. It helps. To focus on something else. Take a breath and tell me three things.” 

I closed my eyes and tried to focus on filling my stomach with air. Then, on the exhale, in stumbling, jerky words, I managed to choke out, “The ceiling.”   
“Kind of broad,” Monty replied. “But I’ll take it. Number two.” 

My chest hurt so bad, but it was starting to feel like pain after exercising, when you’ve pushed a muscle too hard. 

“Phone.” 

He glanced over at the sofa. “Thanks. I thought I left it here. Three? Last one. Make it count.” 

“Your glasses.” 

He smiled. I was seeing straight enough that I could see him smile. “Good one. I really need new frames, these are so scratched. Okay, three things you can feel?” 

“Wh-what?” 

“Three things you can feel. That’s part two. Tell me three things you can feel.” 

A dribble of cold water from the washcloth ran down my chest. “Water.” 

“Shit, sorry, I should have moved that. God I soaked you. Sorry.” He laughed as he peeled the washcloth off my chest and lobbed it onto the kitchen bar. “Two?” 

“Tile.” 

“Three?” 

He was holding my hand. The feeling was starting to return to my limbs and I realized that this whole time he’d been sitting on the floor with me holding my hand. His other hand, still damp from the washcloth, was massaging my shoulder. 

And so, stupidly, what I said was, “You.” 

He smiled again, wide enough that his eyes crinkled. “I’ve got you. You’re okay.” I felt him squeeze my shoulder. “If I help you, do you think you could walk to my car with me and I’ll drive you to the student health center?”

And then suddenly I was sort of crying. 

“No, no, no,” he said, sounding urgent for the first time. “Don’t cry, it’s okay. You’re okay. You’re doing great. But they can give you something that will help more than this. It’s okay, I promise. I’ll stay with you.” 

* 

Monty sat with me in the waiting room, me with my elbows on my knees, trying to focus on that in and out ten second breath, him rubbing my back. When the clinician called my name, he stood up with me, a steadying had on my elbow. 

She left us together in an exam room that felt too familiar—I could feel my chest tightening again as I started to flashback to all those horrific days in horrific hospital rooms, waiting for doctors and tests and results—then came back a few minutes later hauling a green oxygen tank and an oxygen mask. She had a clipboard clamped under one arm. 

“Fill this out when you get the chance,” she said, dropping the clipboard on the table. “No rush. And no pressure to use this if it freaks you out,” she held up the oxygen mask as she began to fit the tube to the nozzle. “Just hold it against your nose and mouth and breathe normally.”

I almost laughed. Like I’d never seen this before. 

“These get a lot of use the week before finals,” she said with a grin as she adjusted the valve on the top. “Though panic attacks aren’t uncommon around here.” She handed me the mask, and I had a hard time feeling when my fingers were fixed around it. I’d had a hard time feeling anything since Monty had let go of my hand. “Just try and relax and breathe for a few minutes and the nurse will be in to take your vitals.” 

Panic attack. I had a panic attack. 

I had never thought of myself as an anxious person, or someone prone to falling apart so completely. And yet here I was, with a semester of chest pain building up to a full scale rebellion of my brain. 

In spite of how vulnerable it made me feel to think of of stretching out on the exam table, I desperately wanted to lay down. On the drive between our apartment and the campus health center, I’d gotten very lightheaded. I let myself fall backward on it with a crinkle of paper, and pressed the oxygen mask over my mouth. Forget trying to breathe normally, I was still just trying to breathe. 

I heard the clatter as Monty picked up the clipboard, then the scratch of the pen as he started to fill it out for me. I almost laughed again when I realized he was probably more capable of filling it out than I was right now. I could hardly remember my own name; Monty knew my social security number. 

“What’s the name of the AED you’re on?” he asked after a few minutes of silence. “Levetiracetam?”

I pulled the mask off my face. “Lamotrigine.” My voice was still shaking and every other word had a long gasping inhale between them. But at least I could talk. “Levetiracetam…was before.” 

“Right.” He scratched it out on the form and started writing again. 

“How did you…remember that?” 

He shrugged without looking up. He was still wearing his glasses, and they slipped down his nose as he bent over the form, avoiding my eyes. “I’ve gotten really good at pharmaceuticals lately. Maybe I’ll go to med school.” He pushed his glasses up with the heel of his hand. “I have some really stellar downers back at the apartment I was going to offer you but I wasn’t sure how they’d mess with your AED. I figured legally obtaining them might be safer.” He cast a vague hand around the room, still staring at the form. His leg was bouncing, making the clipboard rattle. 

We will talk about this, I thought. I’m going to pour all the vodka in our apartment down the sink and dump those stupid pills and lock the fucking door when Richard Peele comes around. We will talk about this. 

I struggled for another deep breath. 

But not today. Not right now. 

“How did…you know?” 

Finally, he looked at me. “Know what?” I was wasting my energy trying to force words out of my still tight chest, so I just tapped the mask. “That you were having a panic attack?” I nodded. He looked back at the form. “I had a bunch last year. After some shit with my dad I kept freaking the fuck out every time I was home with him for longer than a few hours. I thought I was having a fucking heart attack the first time and I’m such a dumbass that I actually thought, ‘that’ll teach him.’” He laughed at his own joke. “The pills help, I swear, I was just worried about how you’d react to them.” He rubbed a hand over his face. 

Had he been popping pills for a whole year and I had only noticed once we started living together? Had half the hangovers he’d shown up with on Monday mornings, wearing dark glasses in chem and falling asleep with his head balanced on his fist, been the aftershocks of a weekend of panic attacks? How the fuck had I missed it? I’d been so fucking focused on trying to get out with the grades I needed and get him out of his father’s house alive I hadn’t realized he had started employing coping mechanisms of his own. 

“They’re really shit,” he said. “It’ll be bad tomorrow too. Mine always are. Like a really bad hangover except you didn’t get to have any fun to make it worth it.” His mouth quirks into a small smile. “They can prescribe you something here to help with the next few days. Get you through finals. And then maybe you should think about seeing a therapist. Sinjon told me CBT worked really great for him. Though I think he had more generalized anxiety than panic disorder. Not that you have a disorder,” he added quickly. "But if you went to therapy they'd be able to tell you better." 

“Do you?” 

"Go to therapy? No, my dad won't..." He trailed off, then laughed, then pushed his glasses up onto his head and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “No. So probably don’t listen to me. But I google a lot of shit so I know what you’re supposed to do. And what you're not supposed to, which is buy Xanax and coke from your high school fuckbuddy and hope everything clears up on its own like it’s acne.” 

“Jesus, Monty.” 

“Probably I shouldn’t be talking about coke on school grounds.” He shoved the pen under the clipboard and then tossed it on the table. 

“I’m sorry.” 

“What for?” 

I didn’t quite know, and when I didn’t say anything he smiled at me. Not enough that his eyes crinkled. “You stole my coming out, so I get to steal your panic attack,” he said, reaching over to squeeze my knee just as the door to the exam room slid open. “Let’s call it even.”


	4. 911

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> !!!!! MAJOR TRIGGER WARNING FOR SUICIDE !!!! 
> 
> another Percy pov chapter. 
> 
> also I'm not a doctor and didn't really research this stuff because I barely have time to write fanfiction, let alone research it. So just. Don't worry about it if you know what you're talking about cause I don't. 
> 
> And again !!!!!! TW SUICIDE !!!!!!!

Our junior year was different. Everything felt different. 

I hadn’t seen much of Monty during the summer—he’d been in Washington DC with his parents, who had moved there for his dad’s new job, and I had been working my ass off to afford a two week study abroad program in Vienna. When we’d finally seen each other again, in our favorite dive bar in Boston a week before school started, he had a new scar splitting his bottom lip, and something was different. 

It wasn’t hard to figure it out. 

Monty and I weren’t roommates for the first time that year since we started school. His father had bought an expensive high rise apartment in Kendall Square where every surface was reflective or granite or both, and he was allowing/forcing Monty to live there, roommateless. I lived most of the summer in what could only be termed a one and a half-bedroom apartment in Sommerville with no air conditioning and more than a few mice, with another music student named Dan whose oboe weighed more than he did and who had grown up with a brother who had a seizure disorder so he was unphased by the idea of a roommate with epilepsy. He was a nice guy. He cleaned up his dishes and didn’t come in late. We got on well and while we weren’t getting matching tattoos any time soon, we were compatible as occupants of the same crowded, over heated space. 

More compatible than Monty and I had been. Dan didn’t stash bags of unmarked pills stuffed between the couch cushions or leave milk in the fridge weeks past expiring that I for some reason couldn’t ever bring myself to throw away because it wasn’t actually mine, or go for weeks without vacuuming and then decide to do it in a manic burst at 3 am. But Dan wasn’t Monty, so we also didn’t sit up on his bed talking until our alarms went off letting us know we had been up all night and it was time to go to class, or watch the Great British Bake Off drunk and then try to make donuts with drinkable yogurt instead of milk. 

Dan was fine. But he wasn’t Monty. 

The moment of change had happened halfway through the second semester of our sophomore year, when a night of staying in, just me and Monty and a fridge full of cheap beer, had resulted in a drunken make out that probably would have turned into sex—or at least a blowjob—if I hadn’t freaked out and called it off. Because I was still in love with him. And he was still maddeningly unpredictable when it came to relationships and I wasn’t up for having my heart broken or losing my best friend. 

And then after that, everything was different. 

We’d never talked about it again. I had decided it was too hard to live with someone who you were in love with, particularly when he was fond of cooking eggs wearing glasses and no shirt in the mornings, which is the most baffling turn on I’ve ever encountered, and led to some incredibly specific porn searches. I had been trying to figure out how to break the news to Monty that I couldn’t live with him anymore when his parents had moved and his dad bought the apartment in Kendall Square and I hadn’t had to. 

But it still wasn’t the same. 

And then I wasn’t dating anyone—Penny and I had broken up at the end of our freshman year when it became very apparent to her that I wasn’t into her and it became very apparent to me how much of an asshole I was being for keeping her on the hook. And then there hadn’t seemed a point in trying to talk myself into liking anyone else. I’d had a few hook ups, one or two that had teetered on the cusp of actual dating. But then there’d be Monty in the kitchen in the mornings with his hair sticking up in the back and his shoulders freckled and I just couldn’t. 

Monty had dated Helena explosively on and off since his freshman year. He even spent a Christmas with her and her family in Sicily, though I don’t think either of them were ever under the impression that their relationship was exclusive. I saw her with other boys around campus, and then sometimes he’d bring home the same boys the next week. And then girls. Then a healthy mix of both. Some weeks it had felt like our apartment had been a miss America pageant with a string of interchangeable blondes making their way down the hallway from his bedroom, giving me a wave as they passed me drinking coffee on the couch, then disappear from our lives forever. 

I had no idea what was going on with him and Helena when I ran into her at a movie theatre halfway through the first semester of our junior year. I assumed they were broken up based on how unabashed she was about holding the hand of the man she was with even after she waved when she saw me, then kissed him before coming over to say hi. 

Our small talk circled around the usual subjects—summer, classes, haircuts, weather—before ending up in the same place the small talk of two people who only know each other because one of them dated the others’ friend always ends: “How’s Monty?” she asked. 

“I was going to ask you.” 

“What?” She frowned. “Why? Are you guys not friends anymore?” 

I looked down at my movie ticket, wishing the screening was earlier just so I had an excuse to bail. “No we just haven’t seen a lot of each other lately. I’ve been really busy. When did you break up?”

“We didn’t,” she said. I was about to make a knee-jerk judgmental comment in defense of my best friend about her being obviously on a date with another man but she went on, “He just stopped responding to me. I saw him at the start of the semester and everything seemed fine and we were going to have dinner and then he stood me up and I never heard from him again.”

I blinked. “What?” 

“I’ve texted him a million times. And DMed him on Twitter. I would have called him but he’s got the thing about talking on the phone.” She shrugged. “I thought maybe he’d gotten a new number, he went so quiet on me. He’s never done that before, even when we’d fight. It sort of freaked me out. I thought something was wrong.”

I had assumed I was the only one Monty has ghosted after our hook up, and assumed it was more of a mutual ghosting until it was less weird to be around each other. But him going quiet on Helena as well felt wrong in a different way. 

“He seemed kind of stressed when I saw him,” she went on. 

“Stressed how?” 

“Just, distracted, you know how he gets sometimes. Like he’s with you but he’s not. It was like that, but more…I don’t know.” She tossed her long hair over her shoulder. “I think it was just school. He was real freaked out about having to retake that math class.” 

I had no idea what any of his classes were, I realized suddenly. I knew he’d failed a math general the year before and had to retake it at some point. Which I guess would have been this semester. I also knew that he psyched himself out over math because he was so convinced he just couldn’t do it because his father had told him he was too stupid to after he failed pre-Algebra in seventh grade. 

“I keep waiting to run into him somewhere,” Helena said. “I still go to all the same bars we used to. But no dice. None of my friends have seen him.” She glanced at her phone and I thought she was going to excuse herself, but then she said, “So you’re not still living together?” 

“No his dad bought a place in Cambridge and he’s living there. And I’m off campus in Somerville.” 

“Ah.” She was still staring at her phone. “Well when you see him tell him I said hi. And I hope he’s doing good. And I miss him.” She glanced over her shoulder at her new boyfriend who was examining the popcorn options, then said with a confidential bob of her head in his direction, “He’s really boring in bed. Though I guess everyone is after Monty.” 

“Yeah,” I said automatically. Then realized what I had just insinuated and added quickly, “I mean, I have no idea.”

“Really?” Helena crossed her arms, showing off a set of immaculate acrylic nails. I had a sudden memory of Monty stretched out on our couch with his head on her lap and those long fingernails playing with his hair and suddenly I wanted her gone. “I just sort of assumed you were the reason he ghosted me.”

“Me?” I laughed, but she seemed serious. 

“Yeah. I thought he finally asked you out.” 

“We’re friends.”

The corner of her mouth turned up. “No, darling, he and I were friends. You two are something else entirely.” She glanced at her phone again, then back at her boyfriend. “I should go. Text me sometime and we could get drinks. Commiserate about the one that got away.” 

“Sure,” I said, and knew that I never would. 

I could hardly focus on the movie. I kept thinking about Monty, the information Helena had given me recalibrating the last few months in my head. After years, I knew Monty was a social creature. He always needed someone around him, even if that someone was a podcast in the background while he did homework or some dumb reality tv show on as he made dinner. He hated being alone. So ghosting me would have made sense because I’d rejected whatever the hell it was he was planning to propose we do that night. Ghosting Helena, who was rich and pretty and had VIP access at every club in the Back Bay, didn’t make any sense. Ghosting their entire circle made even less. 

I texted him that night on the train home that I had run into Helena and she said hi and also that I had gone to see the new Gerard Butler movie and thought of him and our long running joke about how badly Monty wanted to smell his neck. I said it was a garbage movie but I’d go see it again if he wanted to come with me. 

Three days later, all I got back from him, at two in the morning was, “cool.” 

I started texting him more often after that. He didn’t reply often, or if he did it was usually days later. Tagging him on shit on facebook even if he didn’t reply. Posting old photos of the two of us on Instagram and just waiting for the notification to pop up that he’d liked it. I started finding excuses to walk through the math department on my way anywhere between classes. I looked for his Tesla in every Harvard parking lot. I saw it once and left a note under the windshield. If he got it, he never texted me. I started inventing social outings just to invite him even though usually, if he replied, it would be days later with a “sorry, I just saw this.” 

It was a hard semester. I was busy all the time and I was too broke to not have a real job beyond reading essays for the writing center but I didn’t have time for anything that couldn’t be done on the T in the mornings or in between classes and orchestra practice. But the longer he avoided me, the more dedicated I became to my job of getting Monty to talk to me again. 

And then one night, I got out of dress rehearsal for our midterm concert and found a single text from him: a link to a news story about Gerard Butler being cast as a very gay Rock Hudson in a new movie with the caption “hashtag blessed.”  
I stopped dead outside the rehearsal hall where the student orchestra practice. One of the other violinists stepped on the back of my shoe, and we both apologized at the same time. As she passed me, I stayed in front of the door, staring at my phone and calculating a response. He hadn’t texted me all semester and replying felt like approaching a skittish dog. I didn’t want to scare him away. I didn’t want to seem too eager for a reply, but also couldn’t reply in a way that would end the conversation. 

Finally, I wrote back: 

What sort of blackmail do you have on Gerry Butler that you used to get him to do this?

A few seconds, then the three blinking dots of his reply. 

Monty: Vision boards are the shit. 

Percy: Bless you. We will see this together, right? 

Monty: Yes, when it comes out in 2095. 

Percy: ??? 

Monty: No release date. I’ll believe it’s happening when I see an on set photo of Gerry reclining on a beach in plaid and khaki. 

Percy: And then you sneak up behind him and smell his neck.

Monty: You know me well xx 

I stared down at my phone. I still hadn’t moved, I realized. The hallway had emptied out around me. 

It was late and I was tired and Dan was probably already asleep but without thinking I texted Monty back. 

Percy: do you want to come over? I just ordered pizza and I’m bored.

I wasn’t home. Hadn’t just ordered pizza. Had no intention of ordering pizza. And I was definitely not bored. I had way too much to do. But a few seconds later the three dots of his replying popped up. I stared at them like they were a countdown timer attached to something explosive. Waiting. They stopped. Then reappeared. Then. 

Monty: sure.

I texted him my address before he had to ask and embarrass us both with the reminder of how little we knew about each other’s lives at this moment. Then I broke my rule of never take a car when you can take the train and called an Uber, then pulled up the dominos app while I waited for it.

I didn’t need to rush home. Monty was an hour later than he told me he would be. He was always late. It was almost midnight when my doorbell finally rang.

When I opened the door I knew something was off, in the same way Helena had said she had. Even just his appearance seemed…off. He looked like the designer knock-off version of himself. He was wearing a slightly rumpled university sweatshirt that looked too big for him, the sleeves slumping down his shoulders, and ill-fitting jeans. His hair was longer than he usually wore it, and not in an intentional way. More in an overdue haircut sort of way. He usually did everything possible to give himself any extra inches he could in terms of height, but everything about him instead seemed to make him look smaller, dragging him down to the ground. 

He smiled when he saw me, offering up one dimple. 

Something was wrong. 

“Hey,” I said. 

“Hi.” He hooked his thumb into a hole in his sweatshirt cuff. 

“Pizza’s here.” 

“Cool.” 

“Actually it’s very cool because I thought you were going to be here an hour ago.” 

“Yeah sorry.” He laughed. “I overestimated my ability to get my shit together.” 

I could smell beer on him and I had a sense he’d actually underestimated how much liquid courage it would take before he could face me again. 

“Well. It’s here. And you’re here so.” I stepped back and let him enter the apartment first. He took a few steps, then pointed questioningly toward the left fork in the hallway, and I realized he didn’t know the layout to know where the kitchen was because he’d never been here. I nodded, feeling suddenly formal and was glad when he kicked his shoes off without making any effort to put them somewhere out of the way. It felt more familiar. 

I leaned against the counter while Monty sat at the kitchen table, picking toppings off his pizza without eating them. He wasn’t a picky eater. It felt more like a dissection. 

“You must be busy,” I said after a while. 

He looked up. “Hm?” 

“I hardly see you.” 

“Oh.” He shrugged. “Not really. Just. You know. Classes and…stuff. What about you?” 

“Oh, god, yeah. I’m swamped.” I wished I hadn’t said it. I didn’t want to give him any more reasons to stay away. I added quickly, “I’ve been playing in the student orchestra.” 

“Yeah, I saw that on Instagram.” He smiled this time for real. “That’s fan-fucking-tastic, Perce. Congratulations.” 

“Thanks. It’s…a lot of work.” I laughed. “I thought I was an all right violinist and then I started playing with all these prodigies.” 

“You’re a prodigy.” 

“No, these dummies like played Carnegie Hall blindfolded when they were ten.” When he looked taken aback, I added, “I’m joking. And they’re not dummies. They’re mostly really nice. It’s just so much fucking work for definitely not as many credits as it should be. We’re playing our midterm concert on Friday.” 

“Yeah? What are you playing?” 

“I like how you ask that as though you’ll recognize any of it.” 

“Oh, I was assuming it’s a Beyonce tribute.” 

“How did you know.” 

“I just really get music.” 

“Are you going to eat it or just take it apart?” 

“What?” He looked down at his plate. “Oh, sorry, I sort of ate before I came.” 

“I told you I was getting pizza.” 

“It was before you texted me. I just wanted to come over and see you.” He wiped his thumb on his jeans and then did a symbolic pushing away of his plate. Something felt off about the pronouncement. And I could tell he’d definitely lost weight. I could see it suddenly in the bones of his face. I could see the sharp nobs of his collar bone jutting out underneath the worn collar. 

But I let it go. 

Instead I started talking about the weather. “Sorry it’s stupid hot in here. It’s either too hot or too cold and my roommate prefers a tropical climate.”

“Oh I didn’t realize you had a roommate.” 

“Yeah, couldn’t afford this place alone. But he’s nice. I think he’s asleep. He rows so he’s always asleep at like six pm. I sort of miss student housing just because the heating was consistent.” 

“But no air conditioning.” 

“No air here either. I’ll have to come crash with you all summer in your fancy apartment with your fancy air conditioning or I’ll melt.” 

He laughed hollowly, pulling his phone out of his pocket and checking the screen. “Yeah maybe don’t bet on that.” 

I waited for him to elaborate, and when he didn’t, I changed the subject. “How’s Felicity doing?” 

“Good. Really good, actually. I think Wellesley is really good for her.” 

“And she’s doing okay living on her own?” 

“I think so? She seems unphased.” He smashed a piece of green pepper under his thumb. “She seems unphased by most things.”

“When did you talk to her last?” I asked, wondering if maybe Felicity might have more info about why Monty had given up on all his friendships and stopped talking to me. I had her number. 

“I actually called her yesterday.” 

“You called her? That’s…” I wasn’t sure how to finish that sentence so I just said, “Weird.”

“Is it?”

Since he lost most of his hearing in his one ear, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d gotten a phone call from Monty. He had told me once he didn’t like the way he felt trapped in a conversation when he couldn’t hear anything else but it with the phone pressed to his good ear. The only person he ever spoke to on the phone was his father, and it wasn’t by choice. I had begun to suspect his father liked to call him just because he knew it was the way to make Monty feel as isolated as possible when they spoke. 

“You hate talking on the phone,” I said. 

“Yeah, I know. I just…felt like it?” He looked at his phone again. “My parents were here last week from DC and I saw a lot of her but didn’t really see her and I wanted to…I don’t know. Catch up?” 

And suddenly the weirdness made more sense. He was always tense and withdrawn in this way after he saw his dad, and if it had been prolonged exposure, that weirdness must have all built up and compounded into this disheveled exhausted Monty at my kitchen table. 

“How are your parents?” I asked lightly.

“Fine.” He was shredding the edges of his paper towel napkin and not looking at me. “Dad likes his job because he works all the time. Mom’s doing a lot of meditation and buys a lot of candles.” 

“You know what I mean.” 

“It was fine.” A long pause. He crumpled up the paper towel and tossed it across the table, then leaned back in his chair. “My dad and I had a conversation.” 

“Sounds fun.” 

“Yeah. He hates my hair this long.”

“Well he can fuck off cause it’s not his hair.”

“Yeah.” He glanced at his phone again and I was just about to get annoyed when he said, “And he’s cutting me off.” 

I almost dropped my plate. “What?” 

“My grades last semester were kind of shit. Like. Worse than usual. And I failed that stupid general so I can’t actually start doing work on my major yet. So, if they don’t come up in the next, oh, week when midterms come out, he said he’s done with me.” 

I wasn’t sure how to answer. Usually I was so good at reading him and knowing whether he needed to meet his flippancy with serious concern or undercut his tension with sarcasm. He didn’t seem either. His emotions felt nebulous and gray. 

“He’s said this before,” I finally said carefully. 

“I know, I know. He probably doesn’t mean it. I guess we’ll find out next week because I just don’t fucking understand math.” He shoved his hands into his hair, frustration popping his tone for the first time. “It’s so fucking frustrating, it’s like trying to take a class on a subject I don’t know anything about in a language I don’t speak and if I ask questions everyone acts like I’m stupid and what the fuck am I doing at Harvard.” 

“You’re not stupid.” 

“My father would argue that one with you. And so would my professor. God he’s such a fucking dick.” 

“Is it the same one?” 

“Yep. Lucky me. I’m pretty sure that I could be fucking Goodwill Hunting and he’d still fail me. He just hates me, I don’t know why. And I’ve actually been trying this semester, like really trying. I’ve been to every fucking class and I went to office hours and I just…don’t fucking get any of it.” 

“Not everyone is going to be great at their generals.” 

“Yeah but not everyone is still trying to get through their fucking generals as a junior. Or on academic probation. So.” He ruffled his hair and blew a sigh out. “Maybe check in before you come crash at my place because I might not be living there anymore.” 

“Jesus, Monty, I’m sorry.” 

He shrugged, toggling the ringer switch on the side of his phone absently. “I’ll be sorrier next week when I have no money or home or school or job or fucking anything.” 

“It’ll be fine. We’ll make it work.” 

“Thanks Tim Gunn.” 

“I’m serious. You’ve got me. And Felicity. And Helena.” 

I said that last one carefully, wondering what he’d say in return, and I was surprised when he replied bluntly, “We broke up.” 

“Oh. Again?” 

“Yeah.” 

“What happened?” 

He shrugged. “I don’t know I just lost interest?” 

“In her?” 

“More in …Having to deal with having someone in my life.” 

He glanced down at his phone again, a hard crease buckling his forehead, and I blurted “Are you okay?” before I could stop myself. 

“What?” He looked up at me, and when our eyes met I realized just how much time he had spent staring anywhere but at me. “Yeah, I’m just waiting for a text.” 

“No, I mean, in general.” 

“Of course I am.” 

“You seem kind of…off.” 

“Like a light switch.” 

“You seem sad.” 

“I’m fine. I’m just stressed. It’s all stressful right now. But you’re right. It’ll be fine. It’s always fine. It always works out.” He dropped his phone on the table, then asked, “When’s your concert again?” 

“Friday.” 

“Can I come? Are people invited or do I need a ticket?” 

“I mean, you need a ticket, but I can get you one.” 

“Is it…” He rubbed his palms along his knees, then asked tentatively, “Do you want me to come?” 

“I mean…it’s not Beyonce.” 

“Never mind, not interested.” 

“Yes, you fucker, I’d love it if you’d come.” 

“Great.” 

“Do you want to get dinner after?” 

“Ah it’ll be too late for dinner for me. Maybe a drink?” 

“Sure.” 

On the table, his phone buzzed. We both glanced at it. I might have imagined it, but I swore I saw Richard Peele’s name pop up above the text.

My heart felt heavy in my chest. “Do you need to go?” 

Monty stared down at his phone for a moment, then swiped the screen, dismissing the text. “Nope.” He smiled. “I’m here.” 

I smiled too, even though I wasn’t totally sure what my heart was doing. “I’m glad.” 

*

Monty stayed at my place until four am that night, only leaving because we’d heard Dan’s alarm go off for crew. We’d also been texting fairly consistently all week and had plans to get breakfast on Wednesday, though he cancelled at the last minute. I tried not to mind. I was just glad we were talking again. I left one of my comp tickets at the box office under Monty’s name—they were technically meant for my aunt and uncle, but I didn’t mention it. 

We were in the middle of some stupid text exchange about whether HBO was a worthwhile subscription on Thursday night when, out of nowhere, he stopped replying. It didn’t seem weird at the time. It was late and we were only just starting to talk again. I had gone days without hearing from him all semester and not thought it cause for concern. But the next morning when I woke up and still hadn’t heard anything, my stomach prickled in an unpleasant way. I texted him, “Hey, still coming tonight? And drinks after? I’ll probably need food so preferably somewhere with good food. I’ll leave it up to you.” 

After my first class, when I hadn’t heard back I texted him again. “Just let me know when and where.” 

An hour later: “I can meet you there or we can go together.” 

After my last class: “Starts at seven. See you tonight.” 

And then resolved not to check my phone again. I didn’t want to look desperate and whatever weird dread I was feeling was probably just nerves about the concert. 

I didn’t usually check my phone during concerts but I still hadn’t heard from Monty at our fifteen minute call—I’d expected at least a text that he was here. I almost went out front to ask the box office if he’d picked up his ticket. But I was being normal. And if he didn’t come, I reminded myself as we walked on stage, he didn’t come. It wasn’t the end of the world, it was just Monty. 

The first half went by in a blur. At the intermission, back in the dressing rooms, I dug my phone out of my violin case and switched it off airplane mode, waiting for a text to appear from him that he had come or he wasn’t coming or whatever. I just wanted to know. 

Instead, I had a voicemail. From Monty. 

The person who never made phone calls. 

The hair on the back of my neck prickled. The dressing room was loud but I didn’t want to take the time to find somewhere quiet. I pressed play and pressed the phone up to my ear, trying to ignore the chatter around me. 

He’d hardly started speaking and I knew something was wrong. Like, really wrong. 

“Hi it’s me.” A pause. “I don’t know why I’m calling.” A teary laugh. “I just wanted to tell you…I don’t know. That you’re fucking great? Like the actual fucking best person I know and I’ve ever known and I don’t know what I would have done without you. And I just wanted to tell you that before…shit fuck. It’s your concert tonight, I…shit. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I was going to come I swear I was. I just…fuck. I don’t know why I’m calling you. I just wanted you to know I fucking love you. And it’s not you, it’s just…fuck.” A long pause. Something crackling on the other end of the line. “And don’t come over,” he said suddenly, the words tumbling out over top of each other. “I don’t want you to….” Something glass sounding broke in the background. “Shit, sorry I should stop fucking talking.” A long pause. I thought maybe he’d hung up and then “I just love you Perce. I love you so fucking much. That’s why I called.” And then the voicemail ended. 

I checked the time stamp. Ten minutes ago. 

I dialed him back, my heart pounding, turning to face the wall and pressing my hand over my free ear to drown out the conversation from the other musicians in the dressing room. It rang and rang and my heart was beating so hard my chest was starting to hurt and then…

The ringing stopped. Not in a hung up way but like he’d answered but hadn’t spoken. 

“Monty?” I asked tentatively. 

A snuffle and then “Hi Perce.” 

“Are you okay?” 

“I’m sorry.” 

“Don’t be sorry. Why are you sorry?” 

“Your concert. I was going to come.” 

“Monty, it doesn’t fucking matter. Are you okay?” 

Another pause. “I’m so sorry.” 

“What for?” 

“I’m sorry you had to deal with me for so long. Sorry I made your life miserable—”

“What the hell are you talking about? You haven’t.”

“I love you.” 

My heart wrenched. “I love you too.” 

“And I just needed you to know that, okay?” 

Someone tapped me on the shoulder. It was Callum, one of the other violinists, holding up his phone so I could see the time. We had five minutes left before we had to play again. I waved him away, turning to face the wall again with my hand clamped over my ear. “Monty, tell me what’s going on.” 

“I can’t.” 

“Why not?” 

“You have your thing tonight. Your…” 

“Concert.” 

“Yes.” His words were slurring. I hadn’t noticed until then. 

“Monty, tell me where you are.” 

“At my apartment.” 

“Okay, are you alone?” 

“Yes.” 

“Have you been drinking?” 

A long pause. Then, “I have to go.” 

“No no no!” I said, so loud I felt several people turn to look at me. “Don’t go, stay here with me.” 

“I can’t. I’m sorry Perce, I can’t.” 

Callum touched my arm. “Hey. We gotta go.” 

I cover the mouthpiece of the phone. “No.” 

“What?” 

“I have to go.” 

“Percy, we’re in the middle of a concert.” 

“I know.” 

“You can’t just leave.” 

I snatched up my backpack from where I’d dropped it by the door and hoisted it over my shoulder. “Tell Lockwood I’ll email him and explain.”

“You can’t—”

I spun in the doorway to the dressing room, my phone pressed against my chest. “I fucking can, Callum. Something’s wrong with my friend and yes I fucking can. Because none of this matters but this,” I pointed at the phone. “This does.” 

Callum bit his lip, then nodded. “I’ll tell Lockwood.” 

“Thanks.” I took off at a run toward the parking lot, the phone clamped between my shoulder and my ear. “Hey, Monty, are you still there?”

“Yeah.” 

“And you’re at your apartment?” 

“Yeah.” 

“I’m going to come over, okay?” 

“You can’t—”

“The concert’s over. I’m coming.” 

“No, Perce, don’t.” 

“Ten minutes tops. I just want to come make sure you’re okay.” I switched the phone onto speaker and pulled up Uber, flipping through for the fastest option. “Keep talking to me.” 

“Why?” 

“Cause I like your voice. Tell me something. Tell me if you’re going to get HBO. Or about the last thing you watched on TV. Or just make something up. I don’t care. Please, just keep talking to me.” 

I didn’t hang up until I was dropped off in front of his building in Kendall Square, my feet hitting the pavement before the Uber had stopped moving. I buzzed myself in, then took the elevator to the tenth floor. My cell phone signal died in the elevator, so when I let myself into his apartment with the key he’d given me at the start of the year before we’d stopped talking, it was so silent it felt impossible that we had been talking just a few minutes ago. 

“Monty?” I called. Nothing. I checked the living room and the bathroom, my muscles tense, before finally knocking on the closed door to the bedroom and then letting myself in.  
I didn’t see him for a moment. I saw the pharmacy’s worth of empty pill bottles and the broken vodka bottle and the streak of blood on the comforter before I realized he was curled up under it, so small and pulled into himself that he was almost invisible. 

“Fuck.” I vaulted over the end of the bed pawing back the covers. His eyes were half focused, his skin grey and clammy. His cell phone was lying beside him. He’d cut his hand on the broken bottle, and he had it fisted against his t shirt like he was trying to ring the blood from it rather than bleeding into it. It’s that stupid Florence+The Machine t shirt we’ve had joint custody of for years. The fabric is pilled and there’s a hole at the neck but he’s wearing it. He’s wearing my shirt. 

“Hey, Monty, hey, it’s me. I’m here.” When he didn’t respond to me, I shook him gently. “Hey, Monty open your eyes, look at me.” He fixed his unfocused eyes on me. I snatched his phone up from the mattress and dialed 911 before flicking it onto speaker phone.

“Don’t,” Monty said weakly. “Please.” 

“911, what’s your emergency?” 

“Don’t,” he said again. “I’m done. Please, Percy, I’m just done.” 

“Yeah well I’m not fucking done with you, dumbass. Come here.” I pulled him up into a sitting position on my lap, his head resting on my chest. He was cold, his skin flinching away from my touch. His breath felt too slow. “Tell me three things you can see.” When he didn’t respond, I reached down and lifted his chin to look into my face to make sure he was still awake. “Hey, stay here. Stay with me. Tell me three things.” He started to close his eyes, and I shook his shoulder gently. “Fucking tell me, Monty.” 

“You.” 

“That’s one.” 

“You.” 

“You said that already.” 

“No, it’s you. It’s just you, it’s only you. It’s only ever been you.” 

*

They let me ride in the ambulance but left me in the waiting room, still in my concert tux with blood spotting the front. I sank down into one of the stiff chairs and counted backward from one hundred with my head between my knees, forcing myself to breathe deeply with every count of ten, like my therapist had suggested. The panic and fear wouldn’t go away, and I had been running on adrenaline since I saw Monty’s voicemail, but now it was starting to fade and I could feel myself falling apart. I needed to keep it together. I was the only one here for him. For now. I fumbled my phone out of my pocket and called Felicity. 

She was there in an hour and a half, an hour and a half I had spent sitting in the waiting room, occasionally approached by nurses who wanted me to fill something out, then left without telling me anything about why or what was going on, or would ask me what my relationship to Monty was and when I said I was his friend, they’d just nod and leave. I wasn’t family. I wasn’t a partner or a husband. I was just the person who found my best friend half way through killing himself. I was just the person who had been with him his whole fucking life. 

Felicity arrived in yoga pants and an oversized chambray shirt, forgoing the nurse’s stand to instead come straight to me and throw her arms around me. I couldn’t remember Felicity ever hugging me, even though I’d known her as long as I’d known Monty. I couldn’t remember her hugging anyone. 

I was so caught off guard I hardly had a chance to hug her back before she cut it off abruptly with a step backward and a brusque question. “How long have you been here?” 

“Uh.” I glanced at my phone. The battery was almost dead. “About two hours?” 

“Have you had water?” 

“No.” 

“When was the last time you ate?” 

I thought vaguely of a box sandwich I wolfed down at my favorite café at noon, between classes. I had been planning to get dinner after the concert with Monty. I was determined to make him eat something, preferably vegetables, and not let him drink. 

Felicity correctly interpreted my silence. “Go get water. And the cafeteria isn’t open but there are vending machines a floor above us. I did a job shadow here last summer,” she adds, for I must look impressed by her knowledge of the layout. “I’ll see what I can find out and meet you back here. I won’t tell you anything until you’ve drank at least a bottle of water. Agreed?” 

I nodded, mute. It wasn’t until she walked away from me, pulling up her long red hair as she went, that I realized that, since I saw her in August just before she started school, she had shaved the side of her head. I wasn’t sure if she was intentionally pulling her hair back to look more badass and in charge when she spoke to the hospital staff, but it worked. She looked like she knew what she was doing and what to ask, and I felt, for the first time that night, a small prickle of relief. Felicity was there. 

I followed her instructions and returned to the waiting room with a granola bar and a water bottle that I chugged while I waited for her to come back. I checked my phone again. It was half past midnight. I had a string of texts from the other students in the orchestra asking where I’d gone and if everything was okay, and a call from an unknown number that I assumed was Dr. Lockwood. I ignored them. 

There was a sigh of worn upholstery and I looked up as Felicity sank down next to me. I held up the empty water bottle and the half eaten granola bar as evidence.

She nodded, then said, “How much do you want to know?” 

I swallowed hard, suddenly feeling like that entire half of a granola bar was stuck in my throat. I had a sense Felicity had a very intimate understanding of everything that was happening, whether because they had told her or because she had intuited it, and I had just as strong of a sense I would crumple under knowing it all. I could still see Monty curled up on the bed, small and sick, and even that was almost too much. “Keywords,” I finally said. 

“It’s not your fault. Those are the keywords.” I hadn’t expected that, and I felt tears suddenly pressing themselves at the back of my throat. I turned away from her, but she said again, “It’s not.” 

“I should have called a fucking ambulance before I went over. As soon as I thought something might be wrong. Or gone over to see him more this semester. Or just showed up even when he told me not to. I knew something was up and I didn’t do anything.” 

“If it helps, I saw him all last week,” Felicity said. “And he called me on Tuesday which I thought was weird, and I hung up the phone and thought, wow that was a super weird conversation I think something’s going on with my brother. But I didn’t do anything about it. But it’s not my fault. It’s not your fault. It’s no one’s fault.” 

“It’s your fucking dad’s fault.” 

She pursed her lips. “Fine. If you want to blame someone, he may be the best choice.”

“Did you call him?” 

“The hospital did, and my mom just called me. They’re getting a flight here first thing.” 

“Fuck.”

She pressed her hands together in front of her. “Yeah, not really anything we can do about that. Can’t ask them not to call your parents when your brother tried to kill himself. Which they won’t confirm.” 

I looked over at her. “What do you mean?” 

“The treatment they are legally obligated to give you when you accidentally overdose on prescription drugs versus when you intentionally overdose is vastly different. And they won’t make that call until a mental health professional has been consulted.” 

“It wasn’t an accident.” 

“I know.” 

“He called me.” 

She put a hand on my knee. “I know. I’m just telling you what they’re saying. It’s all bullshit legal procedure and in the end it basically comes down to one person’s decision, but it’s what we’re going to have to deal with.” She took her hair out of the pony tail and then put it back in absently. “So keywords?” 

“Keywords.” 

“He overdosed. On pharmaceuticals he definitely didn’t have a prescription for, plus a lot of alcohol. Resulting in dehydration, respiratory arrest and early stage kidney failure. They pumped his stomach and now he’s intubated and on fluids and dialysis and has to by law be restrained for twenty-four hours following any possible suicide attempt.” 

Jesus Christ. I doubled over, head between my knees. Felicity, who not only knew about my recently diagnosed panic disorder but had sent me a list of therapists recommended specifically for treating it, all within walking distance of my apartment, said, “Breathe before you say anything. Count to ten five times and breathe.” 

I pressed my hand to my stomach and did the best I could to take five ten second breaths in a row. “Is he going to…” I couldn’t get the full sentence out. I took another deep breath. “Is he going to be okay?” 

She paused. “Literally a thousand things could still go wrong at this point, but the survival rate is about 90%. So, most likely yes. But.” 

“I know.” 

“Thing can go weird in the most unexpected ways. He could have a latex allergy we didn’t know about—”

“I’m pretty sure he doesn’t.” She arches an eyebrow at me, and I add, “I mean, I don’t know. I didn’t…I just meant I lived with him for two years and there were a lot of condoms around.” 

She snorted. “But you get my point.”

“Yes. Did you see him?”

She nods, staring forward. “He’s unconscious, obviously. Medically sedated. But it’s strange how different it all is when it’s someone you know. That sounds obvious, but I’m so used to seeing medicine as component parts. It’s a PIC line and a breathing tube and a heart monitor but then suddenly it’s just my brother.” She pursed her lips, pressing her fingers against them. 

Neither of us said anything for a while. Then I said, “I like your hair.” 

She laughed, her fingers tangling in the ends self-consciously. “Thanks.” 

“Very Natalie Dormer in Mockingjay.” 

“Ha. That’s what my roommate said. I almost shaved my whole head.” 

“No you didn’t.” I laughed. “You can’t shave your head, then you wouldn’t be an American Girl doll.” 

“Fuck you.” She gave me a playful shove. “And fuck my parents for not googling there was a red headed doll named Felicity before they named me.” 

“Are you going home tonight?” I asked. 

“Probably. They won’t let me stay all night. So I’ll drive back to Wellesley, sleep for an hour or two and then drive back to meet my parents.” 

“Don’t do that. Come sleep over at mine. I’m ten minutes from here. Probably less because of traffic. And how fast you drive.” 

“I do not drive fast.” 

“You drive like the Fury Road.” 

“Are you just using me for a ride home?” 

“Maybe.” Honestly I just didn’t want to be alone. She must not have either, for she said, “Okay,” and we stood up together. 

* 

I didn’t sleep well, but I slept late, and woke to a note taped to the toaster from Felicity that her parents’ flight had landed and she was meeting them at the hospital. I took the fastest shower of my life, scraped my hair into a messy bun and threw on a hoodie and jeans before calling an uber. I texted Felicity I was on my way and did she want coffee, but didn’t hear anything back. 

Until I looked at my phone as I was leaving the Starbucks down the block from the hospital and found five unread messages from Felicity: 

Don’t come, my dad’s being a dick. 

Monty’s still not awake, btw, but more stable and off the respirator. 

Wait maybe yes do come. I may need backup. 

Fuck fuck fuck yes please come 

Black coffee, one creamer, no sugar. 

Felicity met me outside the hospital unit. She was wearing the same yoga pants and chambray shirt as last night, but we carefully wearing her hair down so that the shaved side was hidden. She looked pale, with dark circles under her eyes, and I wondered if she’d slept at all. 

“Can I have that?” she asked, pointing at the coffee in my hand. 

“I didn’t get your text until—”

“Doesn’t matter.” She took the coffee and took a long drink before pulling a face. “God that’s all foam.” 

“Sorry, I’m bad at coffee. Where are your parents?” 

“Dad’s up with Monty. Mom’s gone to his apartment to get clothes and shit.” 

“What’s going on with your dad?” 

She blew a long frustrated sigh that flared her cheeks, then took another drink of the coffee. “So. Legally. Once Monty is conscious and lucid without the aid of medication, they have to hold him for twenty-four hours for a psych evaluation to determine whether it was a suicide attempt or not. My dad is absolutely convinced it wasn’t and has already told all the doctors and cited all his past history with drug abuse and alcohol which is well documented. He is absolutely determined to prove this wasn’t a suicide, which means he won’t have to go to rehab, but he’ll go back to Washington with my parents.” 

“Are you fucking kidding me.” 

“I know.” 

“Is he fucking joking? Where is he?” 

“Percy, don’t say anything yet, we need a plan—”

“Fuck that.” I pushed past her down the hallway, even though I heard her call my name after me. I didn’t know which room was his, but I made it just past the waiting room and pulled up short when I saw Henri Montague leaning over the counter of the nurses station, speaking sternly to a nurse who appeared to be quickly losing patience with him asking when he can start filling out discharge paperwork. 

“Hey,” I say. 

Mr. Montague glances over at me. And though I’ve spent more time at his fucking house than he probably has, he still has the nerve to squint at me like it takes me a minute to place who I am. “Percy,” he finally said. “What are you doing here?” 

“I fucking found him last night, that’s what I’m doing here. What the fuck do you think you’re doing? He tried to fucking kill himself.” 

“You don’t know that.” 

“Do you want to hear the voicemail?” I held up my phone. “Do you want to hear what your son thought he was saying to me in what he thought were his last minutes? Because he didn’t fucking call you, he called me.” 

“Sir,” I heard the nurse at the station say. “Can you please lower your voice and refrain from using crude language.” 

I hated that my voice was rising. I hated that I was the angry black man shouting at this by all appearances reasonable rich white father caring about his kid. In Boston, his obvious Burberry trench coat and Roberto Cavalli tie knotted loosely around his neck hold far more currency than even my Harvard sweatshirt. 

“He needs to be home,” Mr. Montague says. 

“He needs to go to rehab!” I reply. “He needs help! He needs therapy. He needs treatment to get over all the trauma you inflicted upon him.” 

Mr. Montague turns very calmly to the nurse, who is already picking up her phone. “Could you please all security?” 

My eyes are starting to burn. “You’re such a fucking prick. You’ve ruined his life because you got a different son than you wanted and because of that you can’t seem to see that you got someone brilliant and funny and kind and caring and you’re missing out on your own kid. You’re missing out on his life because you’re too busy beating the shit out of him.” 

Someone grabbed me hard on the arm, and I twisted around to see a bulky man in a security uniform behind me, one hand clamped on me. “All right buddy, let’s go.” 

“No, wait.” I was fumbling with my phone, trying to find the voicemail. I almost threw it to Felicity as I was dragged past her, but it seemed pointless. I’d let lose years of everything I wanted to say to Mr. Montague in exactly the wrong time and place and I’d lost because of it. 

I was dumped in the parking lot, and the security guard wrote down my name and driver’s license number, presumably to put me on some kind of “do not admit” list. Then he left me sitting on the curb, my head in my hands, trying to breathe. 

* 

The next two days are just going through the motions. I visit Dr. Lockwood and explain what happened, and he agrees to let me sit a midterm exam instead of finishing the concert. I stumble my way through it, distracted and wanting to check my phone every twenty seconds. I walk out of his office with a C on my midterm and one text from Felicity. “He’s awake.” 

I consider driving to the hospital just to see if I can trick someone to let me in. 

As if she read my mind, Felicity’s next text reads, “Don’t come.” 

I can’t focus on anything, so I mostly spend the next twenty four hours lying on my back on my bed, no sleeping, staring at the ceiling with my phone in my hand waiting for the buzz for a call or a text. 

Finally at eleven am two days after that horrific night of the orchestra concert. It’s an unknown number with a Massachusetts area code. I ignore it, assuming it’s a solicitor, but then they call back right away. I answer this time. 

“Thank God, Percy, take a little more time, why don’t you?” 

“Felicity?” I sit up. “Where are you calling me from?” 

“A hospital pay phone because my fucking asshole of a dad has my cell. Listen, you have to come back.” 

“I can’t. I got thrown out.” 

“I don’t care, you have to come back. My dad is trying to get Monty released against medical advice—the only reason he’s still here is because they’re required by law to keep him for monitoring for twenty four hours of medically unaided consciousness after a possible suicide attempt. But my dad is forcing him to say it wasn’t suicide, he just overdosed, and then he’s going to take Monty back to Washington with him and we’re going to be here again in a month except I don’t think it’s going to turn out the same. You have to talk to him.” 

“And say what?” 

“He’s legally an adult. It’s his decision what happens.” 

“Your dad will cut him off.” 

“He’ll die. He can tell the psychiatrist that it was a suicide attempt and they’ll put him in an inpatient program for addiction and mental illness.” 

“He won’t—”

“Just listen to me. The twenty four hour hold ends at one pm. My dad’s going to their hotel to check out in about half an hour and then coming back to get Monty and going straight to the airport. You have to get here while he’s gone. He’ll listen to you. He won’t talk to anyone else and he might not talk to you either but he’ll listen to you. You have to tell him he doesn’t have to do this. He has to understand it. There are other options. It’s not your fault he tried to kill himself, but if you let him go with my parents without saying anything, you haven’t done everything you can for him.” 

I realized I was staring absently across the room at the small patch of wall above my desk where I’ve taped up a random assortment of memories. A lanyard and pass from Boston calling Monty and I had gone to our senior year. A program from the Met opera Monty had gone to with me in spite of falling asleep half way through. A postcard Monty had sent me from Sicily, an illustration he bought me from an Etsy artist of Poe and Finn with the captain, you need a pilot. 

You need a pilot. 

“Look,” I heard Felicity say. “I have to go. Are you coming?” 

“Yes,” I say. “I’m coming.” 

*

I meet Felicity in the parking lot, and she gives me her sticker visitor badge. It has her photo and name on it, but we’re hoping no one looks too closely, especially since I tug up the corners over the photo. 

“Room 224,” Felicity said, after she’s finished telling me all the details of what I need to lay out for him. “I’ll text you when my dad gets here so you can go hide somewhere.” 

“Okay.” 

“I’m sorry to put this on you. I just don’t know what else to do.” 

I give her shoulder a squeeze. “You’re a hero, Fel.” 

“I’m not,” she replied dryly. “I’m an American Girl doll.” 

“Girls can be heroes too,” I say, and she elbows me hard. 

I manage to sneak/walk confidently with my name table surreptitiously covered all the way up to room 224. It’s eerily similar to the room I remember him dropping in on me unexpectedly just after my epilepsy diagnosis. 

Monty’s sitting on the edge of the bed. His mother must have been the one to go to his apartment and bring him new clothes because he was in a polo I’d never seen him wear, his eyes closed and his shoulders slumped. He was just short enough that his toes barely touched the floor. He’d gotten so much thinner than I realized when I’d seen him in my apartment picking apart a slice of pizza. His own clothes swallowed him. 

He looked up when he heard me, and I caught one flash of fear in his eyes before he realized I wans’t his dad. 

I smiled weakly. “Housekeeping.” It was a bullshit joke, but he had started it years ago when he’d come to see me unannounced after my first seizures. 

“Oh my god.” He gaped at me. “What are you doing here?” 

“Came to see you.”

“I thought you got kicked out.” 

I stuck my hands in my pockets. “Yeah, I definitely did so don’t tell anyone okay?” 

“Never thought you’d be kicked out of somewhere.”

“I mean, I’m black, so it was just a matter of time, whether or not I actually did anything.” I tip my head at the bed beside him. “Can I sit down?” 

He nodded, and I sat down on the edge of the bed next to him. He was fiddling with the tab of the hospital bracelet he was wearing, pulling hard enough that it pinches his skin, and I reached out and took his hand. I could feel him shaking. 

He didn’t say anything. I knew I was wasting precious time but I didn’t know what to say either. 

And then we both spoke at once. 

“I’m sorry—” he said, at the same moment I said “Come home with me.” 

He looked up. “What?” 

“Don’t go with your dad.” 

“I don’t have a choice.” 

“Fuck that. You’re an adult.” 

“If I don’t go with him, he’s cutting me off. I have no money. No job. I’m living in his apartment. My car belongs to him. My phone, my computer. All of it. He’s paying for my school. I don’t even have my own fucking bank account.”

“Come live with me.” 

“I can’t do that to you.” 

“You’re not, I’m offering. You need to tell someone what this really was.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“You tried to kill yourself. You’re an alcoholic. You’ve been abused your whole life and you’ve never dealt with it so you have no idea how fucking unhealthy you are and how much better it can be. It’s going to kill you. It almost did. I’m sorry but if no one else is saying this to you, I’m going to. I waited too long before and I’m not leaving this room thinking there was anything more I could have done to save you because I fucking love you and I’d do anything for you. If you go with your dad, this is the last conversation we’ll ever have and you know it.”

He shook his head. “I can’t.” 

“If you tell them,” I said, nodding at the hospital room door and toward the nurse’s station, “that this wasn’t an overdose, legally they have to offer you the option of in-patient rehab. Take that offer.” 

“I don’t have insurance.” 

“You defer the payment or apply for government aid or I pay for it and you pay me back when you can. Do the program. Let them help you get off the booze and start dealing with your trauma in a way that isn’t going to fucking kill you and then come live with me. Dan’s lease is up at the end of the school year and I’ll kick him out and you can take over. Pay what you can and if that’s nothing, then it’s nothing. Defer Harvard for a year, get a job, save some money, and if you can’t afford to go back, find somewhere else that’s cheaper. Finish school and get a job and get the fuck away from your dad for good. And don’t tell me you can’t.” 

“I can’t take your charity.” 

“It’s not fucking charity, Monty, it’s love. Don’t you dare sell yourself short by putting a price on your life. I should have done something a long time ago. I’ve watched you hurt yourself for years and never did anything because I thought that was the best way to help you but I can’t. I won’t do it anymore. I love you too much to keep letting you do this to yourself. I just wish you had any idea how fucking incredible you are. And how much you deserve to be happy. And not just survive your life, but actually live it and enjoy it. You’ve spent too long surviving. You deserve to just live.”

In my pocket, my phone buzzes. Monty and I both feel it between us, and I fish it out. 

Felicity: Dad’s on his way up. Did what I could. Tell Monty I love him. 

Monty looked away and I knew he’d read it. I squeezed his hand. “Well. That’s all, I guess.” I wanted to hug him, but he looked so tense I was afraid with his dad on his way that any sudden movement might set him off. So instead, I kept my hands where we could both see them, one still in his and the other still fisted around my phone resting on my knee, then pressed my forehead against temple. I leaned in to kiss his cheek, but he turned at the same time so instead our lips met with a glance. I pulled away, but he reached up and put his hand on my cheek and kissed me again. His mouth was closed and it was so chaste and brief and not at all sexual and also so not the moment that even my body, which was very incorrigible when it came to Monty, didn’t seem to register it.

It was just love. That’s all any of this was.

He put his face against my shoulder, and I wanted to stay with him, I wanted to take him home, but I’d done everything I could. I’d said everything I should have said years ago. “I need to go,” I said quietly, “before your dad gets here.” 

But Monty shook his head. “Please stay.” 

So I didn’t move. 

A few seconds later, a nurse in scrubs appeared in the doorway. “Henry, I just need your signature a few more—oh.” He stopped when he saw me. I didn’t recognize him so I hoped he hadn’t been around when I’d had my throw down with Mr. Montague. “Did you get a visitor’s badge?” he asked me, but before I could answer Monty raised his head. 

“I can’t.” 

“Sorry?” 

“I’m not…can I not sign the release?” 

“It’s your choice.” 

I squeezed his hand. 

“Then I’m not.”

He didn’t sound very sure, but he said it. The nurse looked between us, confused. “Oh….kay. Let me go ask my supervisor—” 

“Can I talk to a therapist?” Monty interrupted suddenly. “There was someone yesterday.” 

“Pascal.”

“I don’t remember.” 

“I think he’s who you spoke to yesterday.” 

“Is he here?” 

“He’s with another patient right now.” 

Oh my god this dipshit was making it so much more difficult than it needed to be, I wanted to scream. But I’d done that already and it got me thrown out. And this wasn’t my choice. Monty was strangling my hand and I was so panicked he was about to back off and change his mind just because of how much work it was just to protect yourself. But he said, “I need to talk to him. I can’t go until I talk to him.” 

“Okay, I’ll see if I can track him down.” 

“And can you tell…” He swallowed and I thought for the first time he might cry. But then he said, “Can you tell my dad I don’t want to see him?” 

The nurse frowned in confusion. “It’s your choice who you see.” 

“Yeah but…I need help. When it comes to him. Can you please…can someone help me?”  
And it was like finally the nurse understood. The lightbulb finally went on. I saw him glance down at the form in his hand, his eyes scanning the details, then he nodded and unclicked the pen. “I’ll talk to the front desk and we can get security if we need it. Stay here. I’ll be back in a second.” He glanced at me again, and I could tell he wanted to ask again if I had a visitor’s badge. But then he said, “And you’re not here, right?” 

“Definitely not,” I replied. 

He nodded. “I didn’t think so.” Then he left, shutting the door behind him. 

Silence for a moment. Then I said, “You’re my fucking hero, you know that?” 

He laughed in the way people do to stop themselves from crying, and pressed his face into my shoulder. “I don’t know what I’m doing.” 

I pressed my lips to the top of his head, not sure if he could feel it or if he’d remembered or if it meant anything. But it felt important. “We’ll make it work. We always do.”


End file.
